A Vibrant Valentine's Day
by silvermoonstone23
Summary: In which a poetry contest sets off a chain of events. Over three days, members of a secret club will find that their feelings aren't so secret anymore, a group of scientists collide, and a wild poet will be tamed by an adorable craftsman. Three stories, five shippings. {Oldrivalshipping, Specialshipping, Mangaquestshipping, Soulsilvershipping, Franticshipping & others sprinkled in}
1. Part I: Of Swingsets and Secrets

**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to anything. This is merely a fan-made work of fiction.**

_A/N: Tadaima! I am SO sorry I have not been present lately, but here I'm going to play the school-is-such-a-time-consuming-monster-even-though-it's-actually-my-fault card. I have been a tad swamped, and then at the beginning of the month I decided on a whim: "Why not do a Valentine's Day story?" (even though I dislike Valentine's Day because I'm an angst-filled teenage girl and I'm pretty much supposed to.) But that even took up a lot of time. For any of my followers (I love you people) I promise to update Misunderstandings of Monarchy next week! Seriously! And sorry if the time-skips are awkward in this story.  
So, Happy Valentine's Day! Here's my valentine to all of you~! Parts II and III will be updated later today.  
Rant over! Read on! 3  
-Silvia_

* * *

**Part I: Of Swingsets and Secrets**

**Wednesday, February 12****th  
****School hallway  
7:12 A.M.**

Green Oak shoved his hands in the pockets of his uniform pants as he trudged through the hallways, ignoring the annoying chatter of his peers. He always hated useless babble. But unfortunately, when one rarely talks, one tends to hear more. That was how Green had become such a useful resource, such an avid observer.

And so it was that he passed the lockers of some bubbly (and not completely unattractive, he noted) girls in his class.

"Oh my gosh," he overheard one of the girls—for all his observing, he was hopeless with names—simper, "have you read the paper? The Greene Girls wrote a column about Valentine's Day!" Insert the squealing of her friends.

Upon hearing this, Green shouldered his bag and plunged through the crowd of students to his locker, groaning in irritation.

_It's good that the school newspaper is at least getting popularity,_ Green mused to himself, shoving through his books aimlessly, _while other schools don't even have one. But those damned girls…_

He sighed and slunk to his first class. Then to the rest. He spent the morning, as usual, scribbling notes, solving equations, squinting at blackboards, and sitting in agonizingly uncomfortable chairs (he wished he could punch whoever the hell designed those painful bastards.) It was the twelfth of February, and he was determined to act as normally as possible and ignore the tensions that would build in two days' time.

Being a senior, Green had dealt with Valentine's Days in school before. Sure, it was awkward, but not much ever really happened except for people chickening out and saying they'll confess to their crush the following year. However, as a senior, it was his last year in high school, with his same peers. That being said, it was some students' last chances for a Valentine's confession to their crushes. Green could practically sense the hormones, as if they were electromagnetic currents in the air.

Of course, he wanted no part of it. Valentine's was a stupid holiday. Girls built up their expectations, hoping to get a valentine, and most of them ended up disappointed. Then they ate chocolate out of self-pity. Didn't they realize how bad that would be for their teeth? Sugar could lead to so much decay…

Green slipped soundlessly into the class of his favourite subject, science, and positioned his thin reading glasses on the bridge of his nose. He joined his reluctant lab partner—a freshman named Platinum Berlitz who was just as quiet, easily-annoyed, and smart as he was. Therefore, the two had a sort of mutual, silent respect for one another. It helped that they both liked science a lot—any sort of science really—and were in the Sciences Club, which mainly researched and did projects pertaining to biology, chemistry, and physics.

After the period was over came lunch, along with the usual chill and unpleasantness of the cafeteria. There was a constant stench within the room that could never be described as anything but just plain overall icky.

He sat with Platinum again, as well as the rest of the members of the Sciences Club. One of the reasons he disliked the cafeteria so much was that he didn't even get to sit with his real friends. He liked his fellow science fans, but they just weren't the same as real companions. Green was just sort of inclined to sit with the Sciences Club. The school lunchroom had a sort of order that was never to be broken, a status quo in which students never really strayed from their posses.

And, after all, he had a reputation to maintain. He was Green Oak, the surprisingly popular, increasingly intelligent, dead-sexy science prodigy. Girls swooned over him, for being _so _nice and sitting with his nerdy science pals, for being _so _buff and _so _cool and _so _smart. He didn't particularly care about him (though he could not have said he particularly _minded _having girls swoon over him.)

But was that really all he was? Just a child prodigy, grandson of a professor, who liked science and was good-looking? He didn't really like to think of that.

"Space Cadet, you might want to snap out of it before your ship crashes."

Green looked up from his textbook to find the severe and undeniably-gorgeous junior Crystal Hiradaira staring at him. He blinked. She sighed (she sighed almost as much as he did) and went on, "If you walk around with that blank look on your face, like you've got no idea what's going on, someday you'll walk into a wall."

Platinum sipped her juice box. "Hm…I wonder how the impact of a wall against Oak-san's body would affect him…"

"I'm right here and you're discussing me bouncing off a wall," Green observed blandly.

Platinum shrugged. "I say such things when I get bored with you tedious peasants." She came from a very wealthy family, and although she was not arrogant, she addressed anyone she was familiar with as a "peasant" or "commoner". It should have been offensive, but Crystal had explained to Green once that from Platinum, it was a term of endearment.

When the three of them, as well as the three other male members of their club, dropped into a steep silence, Green glanced all around at the lunchroom. Observing, as usual. There were the girls' popular cliques, the jocks, the Drama Club, the obnoxious boys who came in an array of skateboarders and coffee-drinkers and comedians, the strangely-sexy-science-students (yes, that was Green and his club), the actual geeks who spent their Fridays solving quadratic equations for fun, a colourful collection of various clubs, and the occasional wallflower or two.

(Green noted vaguely that of all the groups and clubs, there was no table occupied by members of the School Newspaper Club. Therefore, nobody ever knew who the supposed Greene Girls could be.)

Almost as if the girl was psychic and reading his thoughts, Platinum started, "So I hear there's something big in the school newspaper." She slurped her apple juice like an eager kindergartener, though her metallic eyes were void of expression.

Falkner, another dashing male in their club, nodded. "I guess so. I mean, there have been bigger things. But apparently in that one column, the one that those two girls write, it discussed Valentine's Day or whatever, and they're holding a poetry contest."

For at least a year, the school newspaper had had a column called "Letters from the Greene Girls" whereby two female students under aliases replied to letters that other girls wrote to them. Usually, they replied to the ones that included common problems that could be given advice about. Rarely was the advice about love, surprisingly. The Greene Girls had gotten fairly popular around the school. At least that everyone knew about them, but not a single person knew who they actually were.

Mostly because nobody had ever bothered to ask Green.

_It's so damn obvious! How can nobody notice who they are?_

"Valentine's Day is so pointless," Crystal replied witheringly.

"Indeed," Green agreed, but was drowned out by the sound of a handsome yet tragically irritating club member asking mockingly, "So are you one of those lonely maids who hates Valentine's Day because she never gets a boy, Hiradaira-san?" He snickered.

"No," Crystal deadpanned, brazenly unfazed. "It's just the fakest holiday ever. And if you think I'm lonely, tell that to Falkner." By the silence that followed, Green could tell she had not meant to say that; it must have slipped out in the spur of the moment.

Platinum raised her eyebrows. "Falkner?"

Falkner smiled coolly. "We've sort of been going out for a month or so."

"And you never said anything?"

Crystal shrugged. "We didn't want to."

"I stand corrected, then," responded Marlon, who'd made the guffawing accusation before.

Green sighed, leaned his head on a hand, and drowned out the conversation for the rest of lunch.

The downside of having science in the morning was that a boring afternoon ensued. It included calculus, which wasn't that bad, but also history, which was boring as hell. In addition, there came time for gym. Green could have been a jock he was so lean and athletic, so he really had no problem with gym. His class was obnoxious, though. Like most of his classes. Students just generally annoyed him. Jocks, especially. Two in his gym class, Gold Okami and Sapphire Birch, got competitive in literally _everything_, while the third jock in the class, Red Sakishima, smiled apologetically at everyone over their antics and beat the both of them. Every time. And every time, Green would think to himself, _This is why I'm glad to be a smart kid._

And then the end of the day came. Other students trickled off out of the school or to their respective clubs. Green lingered by his locker as usual, pretending to sort through books. It was a Wednesday, so he did not have Sciences Club. Which meant he had something else planned.

Crystal, passing him by on the way to her study group, bid him farewell, and he observed how oddly downcast she seemed. He watched her go before shutting his locker and making a break down the school hallways, to the second floor, and to an inconspicuous room that had been specifically picked as one to not draw attention to itself. It had a good vantage point without attracting unwanted notice.

Green knocked thrice, and slid open the door to reveal a regular clubroom with tables and computers dragged in, parchment and pencils flying about, fingers tinkering away at their keyboards, organizing and writing and drafting. He knew this room well.

It was the room belonging to the School Newspaper Club.

His club.

* * *

**School Newspaper Club room  
2:21 P.M.**

The School Newspaper Club met almost every day, but not every member could attend _every _day, since some of them had other activities—much like Green who attended Sciences Club on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and School Newspaper Club for the rest of the week.

Unfortunately, the Newspaper Club finalized and printed the week's paper on Tuesdays, then set it out for students to take on Wednesday mornings. After, they would start on the next paper. It was a good process, really, except for that Green was never there on Tuesdays in case someone threw a curveball. He was not in charge, there was no formal president or representative of the club, but he was one of the four seniors amongst the remaining members, who were underclassmen sworn to secrecy about the club.

Green glanced around, unable to find his fellow seniors—who called themselves "the center ring" of the club—and marched over to a kouhai, who sat typing an informational article for the next paper. Green barked out, "Where are those damned girls?!"

His kouhai cowered. "I-I don't know, G-Green-sempai."

Green groaned and ran a hand through his messy brunette hair. "Where can I find a copy of the last paper?" A sophomore pointed it out to him, and he leafed through the ink-heavy pages until he found the column he was looking for.

"**Letters from the Greene Girls:  
****H.L. wrote a letter to us concerning how to manage social life and extracurricular activities along with classes and exams.  
****_Answered by Aoi:  
_**_Well, there are lots of ways to juggle a busy life…_"

Green didn't even read the rest. He just scoffed at the idiotic alias and kept skimming until he reached the bottom and found what he was looking for.

"**_A note from The Greene Girls:  
_**_In honour of the upcoming holiday, Valentine's Day, we would like to hold a contest! Whoever submits the best poem by the end of the day on Friday (Valentine's Day) will be our winner. The prize is not much, but the winning poem will be featured in the next issue of the school newspaper, and the winner will meet with us, The Greene Girls, in person._"

Green stared incredulously at the paper. Finally, he screamed, "WHAT THE HELL?!" Effectively frightening the underclassmen.

At that moment, the door swung open. "Tadaima!" called the boisterous voice of a fellow senior in the club. "Who's screaming?" Then he caught sight of an angry Green holding their newspaper and began to feel very cold. It was a quite dangerous situation. "Hi, Green…"

"Did you know about this?" the normally stoic and calm boy asked, jabbing a finger at the column.

Red Sakishima smiled, hoping to ease the tension. "Yeah! The girls showed it to me before it got finalized. I thought it was a good idea…"

"It's a horrible idea," Green barked. "When those damned girls get back here…"

"Oh come on," scoffed Lyra, a junior. "You wouldn't do anything but yell at those two."

Green was about to ask her what he meant by that—he could have done something, right? Cancelled the contest or something? Right?—but the door slid open and revealed a laughing figure. "Ho, ho, ho, well what do we have here?" she asked at seeing Green's typically stoic expression twisted into that of wrath.

Blue Chitanda was a tall, curvy member of the Drama Club, and a good source of Green's headaches. Standing beside her was the noticeably smaller Yellow Midori, a shy and petite wallflower.

Red waved jovially.

Green glared. "What the hell did you write this for?"

Blue beamed at him. "It was my idea. What do you think I was drafting in my notebook all day on Monday? And I thought it would be fun to shake things up a bit, no?"

It wasn't as if Green was particularly surprised by her antics, only angry with them. In fact, he had almost become accustomed to Blue scheming against him. After all, they were childhood friends.

Green had been best friends with Red, Blue, and Yellow since they could toddle and chase each other round playgrounds. They were inseparable. Their mothers even chatted for great lengths of time as they played, as the mothers of best friends tended to do. Often times the four of them gathered at the park where they could all walk to, at the big and often empty playground. In future years it would appear unimpressive, but to a bundle of children, it was a quite impeccable mechanism. Beside it lay trees and a small lake where ducks slid by and quacked their nostalgic quack, gobbling heartily at the breadcrumbs that the children tossed their way.

All through the sun-soaked days of elementary school they were Green's greatest companions, by his side for everything. Whenever he said he was having friends over, no one even questioned who, since it would always just be those three. Those three loyal friends of his.

But middle school proved to be a greater challenge. They began descending into the state of existential crisis's and worrying about trivial matters such as appearance or companions. It was inevitable that the quartet would drift apart. By graduation, Green almost never spoke to them. He would see them in the halls with their respective gangs—Red with the members of whatever sports team he had just joined, Blue with her companions from the school play, Yellow…well he almost never saw Yellow since she wasn't very noticeable. Every now and then he would stop for a moment and mourn their lost friendship, but then tell himself he didn't really care. They were just childhood friends, right? They didn't remember him constantly, so why should he care about them all the time? And he went back to worrying about his own life only, as young teenagers often do.

But then came high school. And in freshman year, and event so great would happen that Green would come to call it The Call. The Summoning. The Gathering. The Great Assembly.

A number he didn't recognize called his cell phone one chill Saturday morning in November and when he picked up, the caller screamed, "COME TO THE PLACE WHERE IT BEGAN. TWO HOURS. OR DIE."

He was almost one hundred percent certain the "or die" part was bluff, but the message still intrigued him. He played the message again and again, not recognizing the voice, until he had a rather overly-hopeful hunch. But who else would have sent that message? Who else would be able to say "the place where it began"? There was only one place he knew of where something began. And although it was a long shot, he grabbed a coat and ran out of the house without a word.

He took the long way around in case he wanted to change his mind. Every time he tried to turn around, something in the back of his mind stopped him. Some strange, ancient feeling was revoked and he pushed on. Pushed on until he emerged from the trail into a park that looked pleasant even on that cloudy day, and until he stepped up to an old playground.

Of course, he saw Blue immediately. He called out her name and she spun around, a smile illuminating her face. She glowed as if she'd expected him to come the entire time, but he saw that there had been nervousness in her azure eyes. She was glad he had come.

Only minutes later arrived a gasping and frantic Yellow, who almost instantly collapsed into Blue's arms, and Green couldn't blame her. He had been lonely enough without his old friends, but Yellow must have fared worse since she was tragically shy and hadn't made friends like he had.

Red took much longer and when he finally arrived he explained, "I knew right away that it was Blue, but…I didn't really know where 'the place where it began' was. 'Cause really we met in preschool, so I tried going there, but, uh…" He laughed sheepishly and scratched the back of his head, a position in which Blue would later deem "Da Red Pose".

An awkward silence ensued, but soon they had all gotten to talking, talking about anything and everything, the old days, middle school, the start of high school, everything. Sitting around their old playground, it began again. Their friendship began again. Green had believed all along that it was gone, that there was no way things could go back to the way that they were, but they did. On that day, Blue had pulled them back. That was the greatest debt that Green owed her.

All throughout high school, they spent almost every day together. In the School Newspaper Club, which Blue forced them to join ("So that we can spend more time together!" she'd bubbled.) At frozen yogurt parlours or coffee shops or libraries. Anywhere. Their friendship grew even stronger.

Except high school was a very complicated and temperamental beast. The slightest crack in the status quo could attract unwanted attention and criticism. Wordlessly, the friends stayed with their respective groups during the school, but spent the rest of their time together.

Blue had pointed it out one day, but said that it was better that way. ("It's like a game!" she'd said. "The popular kids from totally different areas—and one wallflower—are actually best friends and no one knows. It's like a mystery! And besides, those other idiots don't need to know our business. We don't have any classes together, so why not just keep this up? Then if someone figures it out, it'll be that much more dramatic!")

Blue tended to love playing games like that. That was probably something she inherited from their very secretive sempais in the School Newspaper Club, who indulged in secrecy; secret sources, secrecy of the news club members, secrecy of location. Green couldn't say he minded. It _was _actually fun to have a secret like that. He was part of a whole secret world. He, Red, Blue, and Yellow were secretly the best of friends and secretly in a secret club under secret identities.

Secrecy was how Blue became Aoi and Yellow became Kohaku. The Greene Girls. ("That's what we'll be called!" Blue had declared one day in the clubroom. "'The Greene Girls'! After our best buddy, Green, and because Blue and Yellow makes Green! We'll just add an 'e' and no one will suspect anything.") Green found it shocking that nobody even _did _suspect anything. It was just so obvious.

But someone meeting with The Greene Girls would mean their identities and friendships exposed. Green pointed that out, and Blue only scoffed as they stood their in their beloved Newspaper Club room.

"Nobody will really find out," Blue replied. "We'll disguise ourselves or something. Plus, we're seniors. It would be even more dramatic if people discovered us now!"

Green sighed at her antics, at her crazy games and plans. Lyra sent him a glance, as if to say, _I told you so._

* * *

**Thursday, February 13****th****  
Green's locker  
7:03 A.M.**

Green arrived at school early the following morning, and shuffled in a very sleepy, zombie-like manner to his locker, where he proceeded to sift through his things to pass the time. He didn't feel like going straightway to class nor striking conversation with the few people who had shown up so far.

But suddenly he felt a presence next to him. _Right _next to him.

Green recoiled instinctively and found that it was Blue, who had snuck up on him and now stared up at him expectantly. "So, what are we going to do about Yellow?"

He blinked, fighting the heat that rose to his face at such close proximity to the pesky girl. "What the hell, you idiot girl?"

Blue huffed and crossed her arms. "You didn't even read our column this week, did you?"

"No," he answered blatantly.

"Here." She shoved a copy at him and he reluctantly read the second letter, skipping over Blue's:

"**S.B. wrote a letter to us concerning how she has come to realize that she has feelings for a friend of hers, and she does not know how to deal with them, especially so very close to Valentine's Day.  
****_Answered by Kohaku:  
_**_From the letter that S.B. wrote to us, I can tell that she is not a girl who often gets this sort of feeling. A crush is an unusual, foreign thing to her. This is why I have chosen to write a reply instead of Aoi, who is an experienced matchmaker._"

Green glanced up at the pesky girl before him and thought, _Well ain't that the truth. _He read on.

"_I also am unfamiliar to such feelings. I've never really felt so strongly towards people. But I have—and yes I will dare to say this—fallen in love._"

Green stopped dead. _Yellow's in love?_

"_I've harboured feelings for someone for a long while. It's hard for me because I'm not a person who is necessarily _good _at expressing my feelings, much like S.B. who finds herself stifled in confrontation. In fact, I probably would never be able to write like this if my identity were known. So my advice to all girls out there who are faced with heartache over someone is to be brave. You don't have to confess or walk away from these feelings, but accept them. Stay calm. And if an opportunity presents itself, be a little brave. Not only because Valentine's Day is coming up, but because we're all young and we have these feelings, so we should not let them be stifled. Especially girls like me who are not used to them._"

Green stared at the paper, baffled beyond measure. He would have never known Yellow to write something like that.

Blue caught his shocked expression. "See what I mean? She loves someone." She grinned mischievously. "Now we just have to find out who and make sure he notices her."

"Don't you have other people to bother this time of year?" Green grunted, referencing how she always came to him and jabbered endlessly about her "shippings" whereby she paired her friends with one another.

Blue snapped her fingers. "That's right! I do! Well, I could try to find a girl for my kouhai, Ruby, he's in the Drama Club with me, but he tends to be a perfectionist. And I already got my other Drama Club friend, Bianca Hyuuga, together with Cheren Ibara—you know him? He's that brunette, semi-stuck-up genius kid on the debate team?"

Green had heard of him. "Of course I know him. We child prodigies have a secret club that meets in the school at nighttime while all the normal kids sleep and we talk about how fugging stupid everyone else is."

Blue furrowed her eyebrows. "Did you just use sarcasm for the first time in like the history of everything?"

"Moving on. Can't you just mess with your brother again or something?"

Blue's younger brother, Silver, was a very grumpy junior in the Sciences Club who didn't like Green. At all. Green would have no problem seeing the redheaded boy traumatized by his sister's matchmaking.

"I could," Blue considered. "He does need a girlfriend. But Yellow comes first, because she's our best pal! And 'cause she's seventeen years old and has never even been kissed before!"

Green stiffened at the mention of a first kiss. "Can't you just let her deal with it on her own? You should stop meddling with first kisses."

Blue faltered and blushed. "But I have to help!"

"There's a word for people like you," Green said, pretending to think about it. "What was it? Oh yeah. Pesky."

She turned to march off and find Yellow as more students flooded in.

* * *

**Sciences Club room  
2:03 P.M.**

Green set his bag on a lab table and glanced around. Mostly everyone was looking through a microscope or on a computer. Sciences Club was generally quiet. Platinum was wearing giant glasses and staring down at some chemistry problems scrawled into her notebook. It looked like the same set she had been working on for a while.

Apparently noticing this as well, Crystal asked, "Platina-chan, what are those problems?" She was the only one in the club allowed to call the heiress "Platina-chan". Everyone else was only permitted to "Berlitz-san," or something of the sort.

Platinum didn't look up, but answered, "A code I've been trying to crack. It just shouldn't be possible…but today I've brought a specimen to test." Green, Falkner, and Marlon gazed over at her lab table, vaguely interested. Platinum reached into her backpack and extracted a paper bag containing…

"You've been trying to crack the recipe of a cupcake?" Marlon questioned.

"This is no ordinary cupcake," Platinum replied seriously. She handed it to Marlon to try, who greedily took a bite.

"This cupcake is awesome," marveled Marlon. "Like, _beyond _awesome. Who made it?"

Platinum hesitated. Finally she decided on, "My knight."

Green and Crystal exchanged glances. They had never heard that term used by her before. So if it was a step above "peasant" or "commoner" then it must have meant her boyfriend.

"The formula just should not work," Platinum went on, "so I have been trying to decipher it."

"Oh boy," Crystal sighed quietly and returned to a computer.

At that moment the classroom door clattered loudly open and Silver Chitanda entered, breathless.

"You're late," Green deadpanned at the same time as Crystal flew over to him and exclaimed, "You look like you've seen a ghost!" Mostly because Crystal was actually his friend.

"I'm fine, Hiradaira," Silver answered. He didn't look it.

But after that, nobody questioned him, and Sciences Club went on as usual. Platinum deciphered her cupcake, which Marlon then ate, Crystal and Falkner did research on their computers (which just so happened to be beside one another and they just so happened to have pushed their chairs suspiciously close), Silver investigated various slides under a microscope, and Green was left with his same old tests and his same old research. There was no breakthrough today. No exciting new experiment for them to throw themselves into.

An interruption could not have come sooner. The door found itself opening again and Blue emerged into the science lab. She sent a smile to her brother, and then beckoned Green out, explaining only, "I'm borrowing him for the rest of the day."

Other Sciences Club members (excluding Silver, who begrudgingly knew of his sister's friendship with Green) stared, baffled, but said nothing as Green gathered his things and left with Blue.

Together, the two walked down the hallway (well, Blue more or less _strode. _There was a certain thing about _striding _that led Green to walk behind her, partly because she was leading him, partly because he was sulking, and partly to watch her as she _strode._ Sometimes, Blue Chitanda could be quite the spectacle.)

"Where are we going?" Green questioned.

"Spying on Yellow," Blue replied, as nonchalantly as if she were just saying _to the park _or _to get a snack._ "We'll go find her and watch to see if she gets nervous around someone. Maybe then we can figure out who she's in love with."

"Yellow gets nervous around the _air_," Green deadpanned. "How are we supposed to pick out one person?

Blue considered this. "You're right. But we'll see if she gets _especially _nervous around someone."

Green stopped mid-sigh, feeling like he sighed too much, and let Blue walk ahead of him down the hallway. He gazed dismally, darkly, dramatically out the windows, like an angry anime character might, still watching Blue out of his peripheral vision.

Sometimes it was so hard to be around her. To say nothing about that feeling from so long ago that had crept back in, and grew and grew. It was her fault, really.

_"Nee, Green! Neither of us have had our first kiss yet, right?"_

_"No, why?"_

_"Well if we kiss each other then we'll both have had our first kiss with someone we'll always love, right? 'Cause we'll always be best friends."_

_"Blue, what do you mean by th—?"_

He still carried that memory around. They were just kids, right? It hadn't meant anything, right? She just kissed him so that she would have had her first kiss, right? With someone who was her friend? So it didn't matter?

But even if that kiss from when they were little had not mattered, everything else did. All of the other memories. Of when they splashed in the lake at the park in the summers as kids. Of the hidden trails they walked in the woods, the sun splaying through the leaves. Of when they saw an unexpectedly scary movie as sophomores and she shielded herself behind him. Of when she took his hand at a crowded amusement park, acting as though she was leading him around, when she really admitted that she didn't want to get lost. Of her laughter. Of all the Valentine's Days the four of them had spent together eating chocolate and watching girly movies (which Red and Green would never admit that they actually enjoyed sometimes, given the right movie.) Of when they boycotted junior prom to hang out together and get ice cream. Of all the years he had spent by her side. Of everything.

All those things he kept hidden, buried, but when he saw her smile, they flooded back so overwhelmingly. Uncontrollably.

And yet, after all the years that Green had known her, Blue just seemed so far away.

She turned round and faced him, tilting her head adorably to one side. "Something wrong, Green?"

He looked her in the eye and lied. "No."

They searched until the hour was almost up and finally found Yellow in the library, alone, studying. Blue swore under her breath that she hadn't caught Yellow swooning over some boy. But they called Yellow over anyways.

"Let's leave," Blue suggested and they followed her out of the school.

* * *

**Park  
5:28 P.M.**

As it turned out, Blue brought them to the old playground. It was already late enough that the winter sun was setting, rays of failing light falling on the playground and the woods, and turning the lake into liquid gold. The three of them sat on the rusty old swingset (because swingsets are places for people to be very dramatic, Green decided, and therefore were good for Blue.)

The aforementioned pesky girl tried to coax a confession out of Yellow, while Green stayed silent. Blue would ask things like, "Has anything interesting happened lately?" or "How have things been?" or "Have you chosen another letter to reply to?"

Green knew it was coming, but still flinched when Blue finally cracked and screeched, "GOD, YELLOW, JUST TELL US WHO YOU LOVE ALREADY!"

Yellow stared, her amber eyes wide. "W-what?"

Green groaned in irritation. "Blue read your response to that letter in the newspaper and now thinks you're some tsundere moe girl hiding your long-harboured feelings for some dashing male who you swoon at the sight of."

Blue turned to him sharply, her eyes glittering. "You know the term 'tsundere'?"

He blinked. "Yes?"

"I've taught you well, grasshopper." She returned her focus to Yellow. "So…I don't mean to pry or be meddlesome—"

"Yes you do," Green interjected.

"—but we're you're best friends and I just figured if you can tell anyone, you can tell us. And we could help, you know? We could drop some not-so-subtle hints to this guy. We could help out. So, if you're comfortable telling us…" Blue trailed off expectantly.

Yellow didn't seem amused by this, or even embarrassed by it, as Green had expected her to be. Instead, she just stared down at her feet for a long time, and then took a breath.

"It's not that easy, you know," she started quietly. "I can't just tell you and you can't just somehow make him return the feelings through some probably embarrassing, elaborately-constructed plan. It's just not that easy." Yellow's voice broke and tears spilled from her amber eyes. "He'll never think of me the way I think of him. And I've known that the whole time, and yet I let myself fall so hard. And you guys are trying to help me, when I just can't do anything. My feelings won't ever be anything but unrequited, and that's the reality of it. It just…it hurts. To love someone so strongly when you can't ever say anything."

Green felt his heart twinge with sympathy. If anyone knew how that felt, he did.

"Yellow," Blue replied softly, "I am so sorry. But I just don't understand. Who is this that you couldn't say anything to, ever? Because I know that you're shy, but if you couldn't _ever _say anything to this person…"

Tears spilled onto the ground. Yellow buried her face in her hands. "Red. I'm in love with Red."

Green felt as if he'd been hit in the gut by a brick. Red? All along it had been Red? Their best friend? He had never realized it. If he had, maybe he could have helped her or done something. But she was shy and had never said a word of it to any of them.

All three friends turned sharply to the left when they heard footsteps. And then there he was, walking out from behind the playground. Red. Wearing a grim expression.

Yellow's eyes could not have been wider. She was frozen, trembling with her hands still suspended near her face. Then, faster than any of them thought she could, she took off and ran towards the tree line.

"Yellow!" Red called out, and he started after her, with Blue and Green close behind. Yellow was smaller and couldn't run as fast, so Green knew she couldn't outrun them, but when she ducked into the woods, tears flying and glinting in her wake, he wondered if they might lose her. If she would outrun them today and forevermore. If she would disappear in the way that wallflowers could, passing them unnoticed in the halls, not answering their calls or facing them again. She could. She really could do that.

And she probably would have if not for a gnarly tree with roots sticking out. Her foot got caught on a root that she didn't see—tears had probably long since clouded her vision—and she fell forwards. But before she hit the ground, a hand quickly grabbed her arm and yanked her back. From the momentum of the save, Red tumbled forward along with her, but managed to cushion her fall. They slid and then sat up, mostly unharmed save for a few scratches. Yellow looked like she was about to run again, but Red, still gripping her arm, pulled her against him and held her tight in his arms, still sitting on the ground. Green almost went forward to them, but Blue held out an arm to stop him and the two of them stepped back, watching.

Red rested his head on Yellow's shoulder. "Please…don't run away from me again…" he murmured. Yellow's eyes widened yet again (if it was physically possible for them to be that wide anyways.) Tentatively, she brought her arms around him. He squeezed her tighter. "Please…don't go, Yellow…"

"I…I don't understand," she said finally.

"I'm sorry I overheard," Red began, "but you think I couldn't return your feelings? After all this time? I just can't believe you would ever think that. You're everything, Yellow. And I've always known that you would be the girl to bring me down." He laughed breathlessly. "I've been beside you for so long, but it's never enough. And I…" He pulled away ever so slightly, so he could look her straight in her teary amber eyes. "I think I'm falling in love with you too."

It was like a moment straight out of a movie, with the setting sun lighting the scene. If Green didn't know any better, he would swear that the chirping of the birds and the whistling wind came to a crescendo and played out tunefully as background music. Yellow fell back into Red's arms, beaming and crying happily.

Blue sniffled quietly, as to not be overheard by their friends, and whispered, "Success! I knew it would work."

"You knew about them?" Green asked in a hushed tone.

Blue shrugged. "I had a hunch. I was always rooting for those two, anyways. So I told Red to come and meet us out here. I counted in the fact that he's curious and will probably listen to us for a few seconds before jumping in, and I had a feeling that he would keep listening once he heard that we were discussing Yellow liking someone, but never would I have believed my plots could go so perfectly." She grinned devilishly and wrung her hands like an evil villain.

Green puffed out a breath in relief, ignoring any God-Blue-is-hot-when-she-treats-a-situation-like-a-scientific-equation thoughts. He thought that the drama for the time being was over, as the four of them walked home calmly, Red and Yellow trying and failing to be discreet in their hand-holding. But it had really only begun.

* * *

**Friday, February 14****th****  
School hallway, by Green's locker  
7:09 A.M.**

Green was at his locker again, on the morning of Valentine's Day, crouching down to sort textbooks, when it happened.

"What is this?" he heard someone ask incredulously. He could hear a sputtered, apprehensive reply, "Uh, well…" But that was Blue's voice. He shot up and glanced over at the commotion. If anyone except for Blue had been standing in the center ring, he would have ignored the drama and ignored it again when Crystal and Platinum gossiped at lunch.

Green spotted someone, some girl he didn't know, leafing through a notebook. _Blue's _notebook; the one where she kept copies of letters and drafted her responses as Aoi. The girl who had found it looked incredulous, before that twisted into a malicious smile.

"BLUE-CHAN IS ONE OF THE GREENE GIRLS!"

Students stopped in their tracks and gathered round to be sure. After all, the discovery of a Greene Girl, or even just a member of the elusive School Newspaper Club was big news.

"I…" Blue tried to form words, but couldn't. For all the attention she seemed to love, for all the times she had put herself onstage or before others, she seemed stumped. Green had to do _something. _So he spoke instead.

"Blue is a member of the School Newspaper Club," he clarified. Blue glanced at him, surprised he would reveal that much, or even defend her so publicly.

"How would you know?" interrogated a voice. Green couldn't see the source. But he answered anyways.

"Blue Chitanda, Red Sakishima, Yellow Midori, and I have all been best friends since we were little. We're still best friends. And the four of us are the four senior members of the School Newspaper Club, which is usually shrouded in mystery. But because we're seniors, it's about time people knew. Maybe next year the juniors will do the same, or maybe this is totally untraditional. Blue and Yellow are the Greene Girls. And we can prove this all. I can prove that I know Blue. That I've known her and known her to be the annoying Drama Club girl that you all know her as. But I also know her as one of my best and most important friends, who's been with me all this time. And I'll prove it, today of all days."

Students exchanged confused and shocked glances, wondering if all that Green claimed was true. How he would possibly prove that he was close to Blue. What he meant by "today of all days".

"Blue Chitanda!" he shouted suddenly, and she stared at him, perplexed. For once, _he _was stunning _her. _"I was your first kiss, right?"

A few gasps came from fans of Green and or friends of Blue. The crowd that had gathered watched with rapt attention. Blue blushed. "Right."

"I want to be your last."

The crowd of students whistled and "ooh"ed. Blue's azure eyes widened like a deer in the headlights. "W-what?"

"I love you."

The crowd cheered and jeered, but still Green was filled with so much doubt. He expected her to turn on he heels and run, and that's sort of what she did. But instead of running away, she ran straight at him and tackled him in a hug.

"You big idiot!" she shouted, and then she kissed him.

After being kissed that one time by Blue when they were kindergarteners, Green had actually been on dates and kissed other girls. It was never serious, and Green always imagined that kissing someone he really loved would be much better. And it was. Students around them clapped and wolf-whistled until Green and Blue stood up and bowed bowed, and teachers came to disperse the crowd (but Green got an odd feeling that they had first waited for the ordeal to be over with.)

Green gazed down at Blue. "Happy Valentine's Day."

Blue hugged his side. "Happy Valentine's Day."

Of course, their small moment of silence was rudely interrupted by Red approaching, shaking his head, and chiding, "You guys just _had _to steal the spotlight, didn't you?" But he grinned anyways, and then the bell rang.

* * *

C**offee shop  
2:17 P.M.**

All day, the four best friends finally acted freely. Everyone else would admit it was a little strange. Two popular students spontaneously best friends and then an item after a dramatic confession. One of the most popular jocks of the school with his arm around a bashful wallflower who nobody really knew (Red's fangirls were very distressed when they found out that he was absolutely _head-over-heels _for his petite friend, and they couldn't very well be angry since she made him smile that adorable smile of his, so they mostly sat and cried in corners like fangirls do.)

Blue didn't sit with the Drama Club at lunch. No, she dragged Red and Yellow to come sit with her and Green at the table usually occupied by the Sciences Club. Falkner, Marlon, Silver, and Platinum were shocked for a few minutes, but silently accepted it (Crystal wasn't present for lunch, as Green noted. Peculiar.)

Blue's only qualm of the day was—as she pointed out rather loudly after school when they all ended up in a coffee shop—that Red and Yellow still hadn't kissed. She stared at them expectantly, as if that was going to make them.

"Give them time, you pesky girl," Green chided.

She fell back against him and Red and Yellow laughed. Perhaps, in a way, they were mocking his misfortune for having such a mischievous girl, but he wouldn't have had it any other way.

* * *

_A/N: So, yes. I did combine Japanese formalities with a different type of school (i.e. still using the term sempai and kouhai, while classifying the grades as freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, instead of first year, second year, et cetera.)_  
_Keep the woods in mind, guys. They come back in Part III._  
_And that's all for my endnote._  
_Arigato! ^-^_


	2. Part II: Of Stargazers and Skylarkers

**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to anything.**

_A/N: Hey guys! Part II as promised. Part III is still a work in progress, and therefore it may take just a little longer and it may be just a little shorter (then again I was worried that Part II would be too short, but LOOK AT IT NOW!) Anyways, I do understand that this story is horribly cliche (does it bother anyone else when there's no accent over the "e" in cliche?) but I still wrote it and I am fully prepared to post and accept criticism. After all, real authors do that. And after all, aren't _we _real authors too? Heehee, but I digress.  
Anyhow, here's your Mangaquest and Soulsilver! 3  
Rant over! Read on!  
-Silvia_

* * *

**Part II: Of Stargazers and Skylarkers**

**Wednesday, February 12****th****  
Crystal's homeroom  
7:13 A.M.**

Ordinarily, Crystal Hiradaira would never message someone during class. She was a girl of strict principals, and felt increasingly tainted if she ever went against rules (even if she wasn't caught.) But class hadn't yet _started_, and she figured that in her case, it was understandable. So quickly she typed out a message.

_Hey you alright this morning?_

It only took a few seconds to reply. Crystal had told the recipient—her little sister, Lee—time and again to keep her phone on (although silent to not get caught) in case something major happened and Crystal needed to get ahold of her.

A reply came in: _Fine, dear. Quit your worrying, I can practically see that concerned frown of yours._

Crystal smiled and tugged absent-mindedly on her star-shaped earrings. She wrote: _I'll text you when I'm out of school._

And she closed her phone just as the bell rang.

"Club tomorrow, Hiradaira," said Silver Chitanda as he passed her by on the way to his seat.

"You don't need to remind me," she replied good-naturedly. The two of them were rather decent friends, both in the Sciences Club and both rather quiet. He shrugged at her and took his seat.

Crystal would describe herself as studious, to say the least. Her notebooks were filled with elaborate records, her binders fat with worksheets and old quizzes, her report cards generous. Much of her time was spent studying (and yet people thought that she _liked _to study. The thing was that if she _didn't _study, she felt lazy, and she hated feeling lazy, so therefore, she _always_ studied.)

So she spent the day scrawling away, and getting the usual cramp in her hand by lunch. She was on her way to the cafeteria when she passed by the music room and heard music filtering out. She figured band or orchestra was in session, before she realized it was just a single piano and a singer. Curiosity got the better of her, and so she peeked through the slightly-ajar door to see who the source of the beautiful song was. A raven-haired boy sat at the bench, playing away, and circled back to what seemed to be the first verse.

_"The strangest of things keep happening,  
And I don't understand  
Most of the time._

_But you come around,  
And drag me all over town—  
You had me falling from the very first line."_

The chords changed slightly for the pre-chorus. Different, but still fitting.

_"I'd say that it's fate, but I'd be pushing my luck,  
And I guess that you're the only one who can change me.  
So I'll stay around until you've had enough.  
Yeah, I'll stay around for as long as you'll let me."_

He had a great voice, Crystal would admit. Strong, but pleasant. He slid easily into the chorus, and Crystal inched the door open just a little farther.

_"Starlight  
Doesn't compare to the way that you smile, and the way that you stare,  
With your bright eyes,  
And I think that I might  
Have the wish I wish tonight."_

Of course, just as he got into the interlude, Crystal ever-so-smoothly lost her balance and hit the door. The pianist stopped abruptly and twisted around to face her, eyebrows raised. Instantly she recognized him.

"S-sorry," she stumbled out, her brown paper lunch bag crinkling in its position between her and her books.

The boy shrugged. "No problem. You just surprised me, is all." His tone was rather familiar, even though the two had never even met. This caught Crystal a bit off-guard. Therefore, she defended herself in her usual snarky manner.

"Sorry, who are you?" She knew who he was.

"Gold Okami," he answered.

Gold Okami. Jock. A virtuoso, surprisingly, who had played first chair alto saxophone since freshman year. And apparently piano too. Supposedly just as a stereotypical jock should be: arrogant, shallow, stupid, slow, et cetera. Heartthrob of the soccer team. Best friend (weirdly enough) of Silver Chitanda (though the grumpy redhead deliberately denied it.)

A few things were out of place, though, about him (and yes, Crystal, much like her sempai Green, was a very keen observer, and therefore knew lots about different people. _Un_like Green, she _chose_ to observe. That way there were no surprises about people.) Although Gold attracted flocks of girls—expectantly from a handsome athlete—nobody really remembered the last time he had had a girlfriend. And the band nerds—a group who usually thought of jocks or popular people without intellect in disdain—thought Gold was the coolest thing since valve oil.

But Crystal wouldn't be deceived by his little act. No, she saw right through to the attention-grabbing airhead lying beneath all that cover-up.

"You're Crystal Hiradaira," he said. It wasn't a question. He seemed to know. "Silver mentioned you. Apparently you're science-y and super serious."

She rolled her eyes at the description and shot over her shoulder, "Sorry for snooping," as she walked away.

* * *

**Outside the school**  
**4:16 P.M.**

As Crystal was trooping home through the city streets—late; she'd stayed after for a study group—she let out a puff of air and watched it, visible like a tiny cloud of fog before her. She didn't know why she was feeling so dismal. After all, what was there to be upset about? She was on top of her studies, maintaining her grades along with extracurricular activities, she was happy with her friends and there was no drama there, and she even had a boyfriend; a nice guy who actually _liked _her. Something under the surface was bugging her a little, though. That she and Falkner had kept their relationship secret from the rest of the club members to not draw attention. And yet, when the others finally did find out, it had been no big deal. No huge topic. _I guess Falkner and I just aren't the dramatic kinds of people, _she figured.

As she trailed slowly along, she heard high-pitched shouts from behind her, and before she knew it, her fraternal twin had skidded over and linked arms with her.

"Hiya, cookie," Lyra greeted.

Lyra was absolutely everything that Crystal was not; bubbly, sweet, adorable, carefree, with cinnamon-brown tresses and deep melting-chocolate-coloured eyes.

In place of that, Crystal was severe, serious, studious, focused, with sharp crystalline eyes and navy locks wrestled into the same duel ponytails that Lyra styled herself with (however Lyra's hair swooped delicately upwards while Crystal's incline was sharp and angular.)

However, Crystal would readily call her sister her best friend. She used to think that she was just a shut-in for realizing such a truth, but then she came upon the fact that Lyra was just as dependent, if not more, on her.

"How was your day?" Lyra asked. She had a tendency to ask questions like that; she was a very maternal and worrisome creature.

"Average. Lessons went the same as they always do." Whereas Crystal was the more analytical of the two. "What about yours?"

"Nothing unusual. I mean, if you're in the most unusual of clubs, even unusual is usual." She grinned toothily. Lyra had been forced to tell Crystal that she had joined School Newspaper Club through meeting a senior named Blue—so that Crystal would not panic and cause havoc when she couldn't find Lyra—but never really disclosed many details about the club, as was protocol.

Crystal scoffed lightly. "I think that the Sciences Club is also relatively strange, if not equally.

"I wish I had the same period lunch as you," Lyra exclaimed wistfully, "I'd love to sit with you and your science nerd friends!"

"No, Ly, you really would not."

"Aw come on, they may be nerdy, but they are damn hot. You guys are like the vampire gang from that really bad romance series. What was it called again? _Dusk _or something? I don't know. But they were supposedly really good-looking, and sort of outcasts, and traveling in their own group, and you wouldn't think that they would be attractive, but they are. Even you fit right in, Onee-chan! You're so pretty!"

"We're twins. You just indirectly complimented yourself."

"That I did, Onee-chan!" Lyra laughed, but then stopped short and gasped dramatically. "Crys, look, there he is!"

And there he was. Silver Chitanda, walking home on his own, looking just as moody and sulky and smudgy as always. Lyra, however had had a crush on Silver since freshman year, and therefore stared.

Crystal prodded her. "Well go talk to him."

Lyra stared at her as if she were from another planet. "Crystal, _bubbellah_, do you know nothing of the network of the female teenage mind? I can't just _go over there and talk to him._ That's like, against the laws of human nature."

"So does that mean I have to come with you?"

"Yes, it absolutely does."

Lyra called out his name and he glanced over his shoulder, confusedly, not used to girls randomly shouting out to him, but then he realized it was only the Hiradaira twins and stopped to let them catch up. Lyra bounded over and dove right into conversation, outgoing against the silent and slightly-awkward-in-this-situation Silver. Crystal hung back, giggling to herself. It was evident that Silver liked Lyra in return (his face was beet red and he was stuttering like crazy) but they seemed to be stuck in the age-old situation of I-like-this-person-but-I'm-not-sure-if-they-like-me-back-even-though-we're-both-really-obvious-about-it-I-still-don't-know-because-it's-complicated-and-they-might-like-someone-else-but-I-still-like-them-a-lot-and-so-maybe-I-just-won't-say-anything-and-hope-the-other-person-makes-a-move.

Crystal was about to walk forward and try to help them out a bit, when suddenly, someone lunged out from an alleyway, grabbed her arm, clamped a hand over her mouth before she could let out a scream, and pulled her in.

"Shh," whispered a voice, "I'm plotting…hey wait…" Her captor released her. Crystal whirled around and looked up to meet a pair of wide amber eyes. "Crystal," Gold observed.

"What the hell was that for?" she whispered. "And why am I whispering?"

"Sorry." He scratched the back of his head sheepishly (a habit he'd picked up from his sempai, Red, no doubt.) "That's Lyra, right? Your twin sis? Silver talks about her a lot. I've been trying to get the two of them to be alone."

Crystal raised her eyebrows. "You're matchmaking? _You_?"

"Yeah. Why?"

She flinched. "Nothing. Just doesn't seem like the style of a jock."

It was his turn to raised his eyebrows, but in a rather amused manner. "Oh really? And what _does _seem like the style of a jock?"

"Well…you guys just seem to like to bash each others' heads in and then have a good guffawing laugh about it and go to whatever pizza place is cool right now or whatever." Heat rose to her cheeks at her impromptu explanation.

"We're more than that," Gold replied. "Well, at least some of us. I mean, you caught me in action today, no? Even when band isn't in session, I basically haunt that music room like a ghost."

"I guess I was wrong." She was a little more than reluctant to admit that.

Gold patted her on the head, that same aura of familiarity returning, even though he'd just officially met her a few hours earlier. It made Crystal squirm a little. He was certainly strange.

Then his eyes flashed with some sort of giddy panic and he said, "I think I hear Silver. He probably has realized I've been tailing him for a while now." He grinned. "See ya, Crys."

Before she could object to such an absurd and spontaneous nickname, he flew away. She stepped out of the alleyway and rejoined Lyra and Silver, explaining that she'd been taken hostage by Gold, who was matchmaking. Silver groaned something about how he didn't need another matchmaker in his life.

As Crystal continued home, she couldn't stop thinking about what Gold said. _He said "see ya" as if that implies that we often see each other, which we don't, or that we'll see each other again, which we probably won't._

And although she didn't want to admit it, she would later realize that that speculation was quite incorrect in the long run.

* * *

**Thursday, February 13****th****  
School hallway  
12:29 P.M.**

When Crystal slammed her locker, suddenly her sister was there on the other side.

"Christ, Lyra! You want to give me a heart attack?"

"You know, I didn't mention it before, but that was a rotten prank you played on me and Silver yesterday."

Crystal rolled her eyes. "That was not my game to play. But I probably would have done something similar had I not been interrupted by a delinquent." _Hm, _she thought as she tested out the word, _"delinquent" is a good description enough for Gold Okami._

Lyra huffed, crossing her arms haughtily. "If it's going to happen, it'll happen when it's supposed to happen."

Crystal sighed. "Of course. I'm just trying to help." And she scurried off to her next class.

Of course, the same thing happened and when she closed her locker two periods later, at the end of the day, shouldering her bag, another person was standing there, this time tall and broad where Lyra had been tiny and unassuming.

"Why do people keep freaking me out like that?!" Crystal spluttered.

Gold paid no heed and instead whined, "You tattled on me, Crystal."

She sighed, feeling like she had sighed enough for one day but needing some way to express her exasperation. "I did not _tattle_; I merely told Silver that it was your doing."

"That is _so _tattling. You're a tattletale, Crystal Hiradaira."

"Must you be so infuriatingly childish?" she questioned. "And don't you have a band room to haunt right now?"

His lips curved into a grin. "So you remembered what I said. And I do. Have fun at your nerd-science-club-thing." He saluted her and walked off, whistling the tune she'd heard him singing before. Crystal headed towards the opposite way, towards Sciences Club.

* * *

**School hallway  
2:16 P.M.**

Lyra kept thinking about how both Crystal and Gold—whom she didn't know too well, but she had shared a class with him previously—were convinced she was destined to be with Silver. It wasn't as if she _didn't _want Silver to think of her that way. She just wanted to make him like her on her own.

Gradually, she worked up the nerve to go talk to him. Her mind ran circles on whether to walk up to him or not once he was in sight, but as she was hesitating, he turned round and spotted her.

_Well, at least I didn't have to make that decision._ "Hi Silver!" she greeted him. "Where are you headed?"

"Sciences Club," he answered as she watched some of the last students filtering out from the school. "You?"

"Um…Cooking Club," she told him, even though Cooking Club met on Mondays and she was actually going to the School Newspaper Club.

As Lyra was watching students leave, she noticed a figure _enter _the school. _Peculiar, _she thought. The figure turned out to be a tall-and-curvy-but-still-thin-and-cute brunette girl, who wore another school's uniform and had the sort of confidence that always intimidated Lyra.

Silver caught her stare, and as he glanced over, he did a double-take and his face drained of colour.

"Silver?" Lyra asked, but he didn't respond. He just stared at the girl. She turned, did a double take, and stared at him as well. Both mirrored, wide-eyed, and staring.

Then the girl piped up. "It's been a while, Silver." She gave a slight wave. In her other hand, Lyra noticed a visitor's pass, one that looked like it said something about the basketball game. From her varsity jacket, Lyra could deduce she was one of the players from whatever school the girls' basketball team was playing today.

"Yeah," Silver replied finally. "Maybe it should just stay that way." He turned and marched briskly down the hall. Lyra was left there, agape, appalled at his rudeness. The girl appeared grim but unsurprised.

Lyra didn't know what she was supposed to say so she just turned and ran after her friend, calling out to him. She never saw the girl brush away a tear and stroll away towards the gym.

"Silver!" Lyra called and finally caught up with him as they reached the second floor. He was headed to the science room. Lyra caught him by the shoulder, and when he whirled around, but instead of angry he just wore some unreadable expression of panic and sadness. "What—"

"Just drop it okay?!" Silver shouted, interrupting her. "Just drop it!" He raced into the Sciences Club's room and shut the door behind him.

Lyra felt tears already streaming down her face. _Stupid stupid girl don't be such a crybaby he had a right to do that, you were prying you stupid stupid stupid…_

She leaned back against the wall outside of the science room and slid down until she was scrunched into a little ball and could sob into her knees. _I have no idea what's going on and why this hurts so much…_

* * *

**Sciences Club room  
4:48 P.M.**

On the less eventful days of Sciences Club, the members tended to do their homework whilst in the comforting science lab, and afterwards just research scientific topics that intrigued them. That was sort of the swing of things when there was no actual, physical experiment.

So after the interesting little quips of the day—everyone's initial realization that Platinum was analyzing a _cupcake_, Silver stumbling in breathlessly, and Green being dragged away by Blue (which happened at 4:45 and which was increasingly strange since the two had no relation as far as anyone knew) Crystal fell into the deep silence that a calm day in the Sciences Club ensued.

Platinum was scrawling away eagerly, Silver was doing some aimless examinations, Marlon was doing homework, and Crystal was sitting with Falkner at a pleasantly close proximity.

For the past hour or so they had pulled up textboxes on their monitors and occasionally typed something in that the other would see, such as an interesting theorem, or, more likely, a simple conversation that a couple might have.

But Crystal and Falkner were an unusual couple. Another young couple's messages might include more abbreviations like "BTW" or "OMG" or "LOL" and might include a more interesting and heart-warming conversation and would _definitely _include more hearts (this kind: 3)

However, their messages did not. There were no spontaneous declarations of love, nothing sweet or special. Just the talking of two folks who were rather close.

It bothered Crystal a little. It bothered her that she was so serious and couldn't think of something light and happy to say. And it bothered her that Falkner was the same way.

So, she typed into her textbox, _So Valentine's Day is coming up._ When he didn't seem to notice for a few minutes, Crystal added to her box, _And even though it's a pointless holiday, I was thinking that maybe we could see a movie or something. Nothing horribly Valentine's Day related or cliché. Just a thought._

She pretended not to be watching him as his eyes flickered to her screen. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw his fingers moving and watched as his words appeared on the screen: _I've been thinking a lot too._

Her heart thrummed, and she swore it was beating out Morse code for _uh-oh._

Falkner typed fast. His words appeared rapidly, though Crystal took them in rather slowly.

_I've been thinking that we're stuck, in a way. Maybe we didn't get off to the greatest start, being quiet about our relationship. It was Newton who said that an object in motion stays in motion, and an object at rest stays at rest._

As soon as Crystal saw that opening, she jumped in: _Yes, but he stated that an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside force._ She couldn't imagine what an "outside force" could be; she was just grappling for a counter.

Falkner wrote: _You just haven't seemed happy lately, and I want you to be happy. I want us to be happy. Maybe breaking up would be a force. Maybe it could get us moving to the right place, since we're stuck right now. I like you, Crystal. I like you a lot. I just don't know how much "liking" will pull us through. I think we think too much alike, and maybe we need people who will be more different, and change our perspectives._

He was thinking of it so scientifically. He was analyzing it like it wasn't a human relationship. And it dawned on Crystal that that was what she had been doing as well. Analyzing was all she had ever done.

_I hate to admit it Falkner, but a lot of what you're saying makes sense. I just wish it didn't have to be this way._

A wish. She internally scoffed at what she wrote to him. How would a wish help her out now?

To this, he replied: _I agree. I wish there were some way for us to change, but we'll never change if we're together. We're like timber, just sitting around. And because we didn't spark, we didn't catch fire. We need a spark, and we can't get that with each other._

It was a losing battle, and Crystal knew it, because his words came crashing down on her. There was absolute silence in the room, other than the noise of the keyboards and pencils scratching at parchment. There was silence, and all Crystal could feel was the heat in her face and the tears clouding her view of Falkner's monitor. He wasn't looking at her. He was staring straight ahead.

_Crystal. Do you want to let this go?_

She was tired of the silence.

She needed noise.

"Okay," she said aloud, but it came out more like a whimper. She stood and sent her chair rattling as she grabbed her bag and left the room as quickly as possible, ignoring the stares of the others. She couldn't let them see her crying.

_I hate this. I hate this so much. I hate that my first relationship just ended in silence. There was no shouting or screaming and I'm the only one crying and even _I'm _still silent. Stupid, stupid, stupid…_

Lyra was probably already home. Silver was back in the science lab. Everything was spinning so out of control, that Crystal had no clear thoughts, no balance in a startling silence, just her heavy footsteps in an empty corridor.

She knew a place where there would always be noise. It was a long shot, but she started down the hallway, breaking into a run and wiping her tears with her sleeve.

* * *

**Science room  
5:12 P.M.**

Silver couldn't take such drama. He couldn't take his own and he couldn't understand why Crystal had run and Falkner wasn't answering any questions and the quiet was just too much for him, so he shoved himself up and grumbled, "I'm going home early."

So he did. He stepped out of the door, closed it behind him, turned around, and sighed, trying to regain some composure after the tense silence of the science lab.

He jumped, startled, when he noticed someone sitting, balled up beside the lab door, twintails drooping sadly.

"Holy crap, Lyra," he gasped and crouched down before her. "Have you been out here the whole time?!"

Lyra lifted her head from where it was—buried in her scrunched-up knees—and he saw that her face was blotchy and tear-stained, her eyes red and pouffy. She looked as though she had ceased crying for a while, but when her deep coffee-coloured eyes caught sight of him, they instantly began watering again.

"I'm so sorry, Silver," she bawled. "I didn't mean to be troublesome, but you were just so distressed that I just wanted to wait, and…I don't know…" She took a shaky breath. "Crystal came running out of here a little while ago. I wanted to say something because she was crying, but she looked so spooked that she didn't even see me here."

Silver sighed. "God, Lyra…" He moved to sit against the wall beside her, put an arm around her, and cradled her head on his shoulder. "I suppose you want answers."

"You don't need to tell me anything," she replied.

"No. I will." He took a breath. "That girl who you saw is called Jasmine. Had been friends with me and Gold since the three of us came to this high school. I had this huge crush on her, and last year we started dating. She was just…this incredibly strong person and I just felt so lucky that she liked me. I decided I didn't like calling her 'Jaz' because that just sounded stupid, so I called her 'Minnie'. Like the mouse. And now, no joke, I totally can't even think about Disney."

He laughed a little, and Lyra chanced a sympathetic smile. Then the smile slid from his expression. "Towards the end of sophomore year, she told me she was going to start going to this vocational high school for communicative arts. I said we'd be fine even if she was away, but she didn't think so. She ended things, and she broke my heart. I know that she had her reasons, and I'm fine with it now. We would have never worked out, in the end. I just don't want to be around her. Mostly because I'd rather be around someone else. I don't have to be the one to tell Jasmine that there's this really cool girl that I met in the beginning of junior year, who was just the complete opposite of her—hilarious, jumpy, and happy all the time—and that this girl helped me a lot. Helped me get over Jasmine and realize that Jasmine _wasn't _my match. That I don't need to spend my time wallowing in self-pity. That there will be someone who understands me and cares about me way more than Jasmine ever would have. And I'll care just as much back."

Silver turned and wrapped his other arm around the small girl before him, embracing her tightly. "I love you, Lyra Hiradaira."

Lyra couldn't keep the smile off her face. She kissed Silver on the cheek and said, "I love you too, Silver."

* * *

**School hallway  
5:01 P.M.**

Crystal stopped outside the music room door and listened. She heard nothing from inside. Maybe Gold was already gone. Maybe he just wasn't there to begin with. But he had told her before that even when the band didn't stay after class, he still lingered in the music room, hadn't he?

Then she heard the piano start up, the same song that she had overheard before. For a moment she just stood at the door, listening to Gold's familiar voice sing a new verse, and her worries drifted away.

_"I don't remember what to say  
When I see your smiling face,  
'Cause my heart skips a beat when I hear your voice._

_If hope is the thing with feathers,  
Then heart is the thing with wings.  
You just came and stole mine; you gave me no choice."_

Suddenly, though, when the chords changed to the pre-chorus again, Crystal heard another voice join in. Pitchy and female, but not horrible.

_"I'd say that it's love, but I have jinxed us enough,  
And I guess that you can hear me calling.  
So I'll wait around until the hour is up.  
Yeah, I'll wait around until you're falling."_

The girl seemed very unsure of herself while singing—finding it hard to find the right notes and follow Gold—but she sounded like she knew the words by heart. In the chorus, Gold swung effortlessly into a harmony and let the girl fly free on the melody (which was not the best idea; she was more than a little shaky and seemed startled by this change.) Nonetheless, they sounded really good together.

_"Starlight  
Doesn't compare to the way that you smile, and the way that you stare,  
With your bright eyes,  
And I think that I might  
Have the wish I wish tonight."_

They stopped and began talking about the bridge of the song, but Crystal could no longer catch any of their words.

She shouldered her bag and sniffled and sighed, unsure of why she felt even worse than before. _Probably because I'm in no mood for a love song, _she convinced herself, and began to walk home alone.

* * *

**Music room  
4:59 P.M.**

Gold played contentedly through the chorus, showing off his newly-constructed melody to his companion. When he stopped, he glanced over for her approval. "Not bad for having just got it yesterday, eh? We make a good team. You with your fancy clichéd lines, and me with my badass music skills."

"Cliché?" she questioned.

"The whole part about a heart skipping a beat," Gold explained. "Cliché. Used in lots of songs."

"Oh." Her cheeks flushed with a light dusting of pink. "But that's what it feels like. When you really like someone. They look at you and you can't breathe for a second. They say your name and your heart skips a beat. Isn't that what it's like?"

After a pause, he answered softly, "Yeah. That's what it's really like." But then realization dawned on him. "Hang on…did my brutish little kouhai just say something incredibly girly?!"

"No!" she shouted and punched him in the arm (which hurt a lot more than he let on. That damn girl had fists of _iron._) "JUST PLAY THE SECOND VERSE, WILL YA?"

Gold shrugged. "Fine. But you have to join in."

And so he started off on the second verse. He had to look at the sheet before him to know the words—they were, in truth, the words of his companion—but he knew the melody and chords since he had come up with them.

As his kouhai joined in and they went on, he found his mind wander. Wander to the glittering sky on a summer evening. To the reflection of the luminous lights in water. To the view of their magnified majesty through a telescope. To star-shaped earrings he knew he'd seen somewhere, but he couldn't quite place where. And, finally, to Crystal.

Maybe he'd started relating the colour of her eyes to the sky, or the shine of them to stars, but suddenly she was all he was thinking about.

And he was singing a song about _love._

He broke off after the chorus and shook himself. There was no way. There was just no way.

He turned back to his companion and began inquiring about the bridge to distract himself. "So did you have any particular ideas about the melody for the bridge? I haven't worked it out yet, but I have the chords."

"I never have ideas about the melody," was the curt reply. "I never figure out those things."

"Right." Gold thought for a moment that he heard noises outside the door—something like snuffling and breathing and footsteps—and considered going out there. What if someone was crying? Saving damsels in distress was his specialty, after all. "Sapph, did you just hear someone outside?"

"I didn't hear anything," she answered. "You wanna go check?"

He considered, but then thought it would only break his focus. "Nah. Probably just a spooky ghost. We've gotta get this done, yeah? For your manga thing?"

"Oh. Right. The manga."

Gold raised his eyebrows suggestively. "Or is this for something else? Or, rather, some_one,_ perhaps?"

Sapphire turned beet red. "Just play your damned piano."

He knew better than to argue. "Yes ma'am."

* * *

**Hiradaira residence  
6:31 P.M.**

It was hours after Crystal had left the school, facing the biting cold on her own. She sat in her room doing—you guessed it—some studying, trying to ignore Lyra loudly strumming an acoustic guitar in the next room over, when a sharp cry filled the room and kept sounding out. For a moment, Crystal froze, confused, but then the next she realized what it was and muttered a curse word, shoving herself up to stop the horrible shrieking. She answered her insistently-ringing cell phone. "Hello?"

"Hey Crys!" came the response.

_Oh God._

"Who gave you permission to call me 'Crys'? And how did you get my number?" Crystal asked, a bit harsher than she'd meant. But, as one could probably judge from how puzzled she was by her phone ringing, Crystal did not often receive calls.

"I gave myself permission, and I got the number from Silver."

"Silver doesn't have my number."

"Well he got it from Lyra!"

_Damn meddlesome sister._ Lyra continued to play her guitar—why did it have to be the _same four damn chords over and over again_?—in the next room, singing along to some song (though with Lyra's tone-deaf voice it sounded more like strained yodeling.)

"Anyways, I need you to come over here!"

Crystal raised her eyebrows and glanced at the analog clock hanging on her wall. "Now?"

"Yes! Now!" Gold shouted back.

She bit her lip. She was tempted—but _only _because she was curious to see what on Earth he was babbling about, she told herself—to accept, but one thing stood in her way. "I sort of have to be somewhere at, like, eight…"

"Great! I can drive you there afterwards."

Crystal sighed. _There really is no getting out of this. _"Fine. Text me your address and I'll get my intrusive twin to drop me off in a few minutes."

* * *

**Okami residence  
6:49 P.M.**

Crystal checked her phone at least five times, paranoid, making sure she got the house number correct as she rang the bell. She was on the outskirts of city, where skyscrapers sloped downwards into citizen streets of simple homes and businesses. The house itself was family-sized, with apologetically droopy windows and dandelion-yellow paneling. In sunlight, it probably would have looked overall welcoming, but being there at night just made her anxious. She had even made Lyra wait in the street.

The door swung open, and there stood Gold, his bright smile reassuring her like nothing else could. Crystal turned and waved to Lyra, and she swore she could see her sister's knowing grin through the windows as the car pulled away.

"Well, if it ain't Cryssy the serious gal," Gold remarked brightly. "Come on in."

The house, much like its outside, was quaint and certainly broken-into. It was cluttered and messy, and a group of kids playing some elaborate game involving running and shouting trotted by. And yet, somehow it felt warm and light. A grand piano sat off to one side, covered in music and stray papers and old magazines and a textbook. Sitting before it was a sighing bench that sagged so much that Crystal could tell it had probably been around for longer than she had.

Crystal surveyed the disorder and giggled. "No offense, but it's like you live in a shoe. A nice shoe," she added for good measure.

Gold sent her a withering look. "You don't know the half of it. Most of the kids that turn up here are just neighbours. It's like a daycare, weirdly. Helpful thing, though; they're like little elves when you give them a project working together, like cooking. You know, if you like pumpkin muffins that taste like plaster and have uncooked noodles sticking out of them."

"And you're the oldest?" Crystal asked, watching the kids as one of them hid under a blanket and lashed out at the others, while they tried to hit him with pillows and avoid being swiped.

"Unfortunately." He cleared some rubbish off of the grand piano. "As you can see, I grew up really informally, which is why I tend to just call people by their first names." He sent her an apologetic look before leaping over to the stairs and calling, "I just have to grab something. One second." He flung himself up a flight of stairs and disappeared onto the second floor.

A little girl came over and tapped on Crystal's knee to get her attention. "Are you Onii-chan's girlfriend?"

Crystal was too shocked to say anything for the moment, but Gold beat her to it, rushing back down and shooing the girl away. "Crys is not my girlfriend. Go play."

"Strange to think your sister confused me with your girlfriend," Crystal noted.

Gold blinked. "I don't have a girlfriend."

Crystal raised her eyebrows. "You don't? But…"

"But?"

"Okay, well, I was spying…"

"I already know this story can't end well," Gold interjected.

"And I happened to pass the music room and happened to hear you singing with a girl and I just figured…" Crystal let herself trail off, implicating her mistake.

"Oh…oh! Oh, no. Oh, never. Not her, anyone but her," Gold replied with a shudder. "That girl I was singing with, that's Sapphire Birch. You know her? That obnoxious sophomore?"

Crystal nodded. "You two are notorious. Supposedly you two compete on virtually everything and then Red Sakishima swoops in and beats you both—"

"Yes, yes, we know the story," Gold interrupted, a tad embarrassed. "Well, Sapph is actually my neighbour too; I've known her and her kid brother since we were old enough to bash each others' faces in. Point of the story, is that she's secretly girly, the song was hers, but she can't play an instrument nor sing to save her damned life and often forces me to help with such nonsense. 'Kay? So, um, no. Definitely _not _my girlfriend. I do _not _want a piece of that magic. I feel bad for the poor bastard who she _does _like." He pushed open a sliding door and Crystal noticed that he had retrieved something cylinder-shaped from the second floor. "Go on out."

The backyard was grassy and woodsy, and brisk as Crystal stepped out and heard the sliding door snap shut behind her. "Okay," Gold began, "I actually brought you here to show you…_this._" He waved a hand theatrically, gesturing to the sky.

"Um…you brought me here to show me the sky?"

"Not the _sky, _the _stars,_" Gold corrected.

Crystal looked up. They were, in fact, beautiful. Slightly away from the city lights, they were crisper and clearer than Crystal could often see them. It was rare that Crystal could get a real good look at the stars, even though she found them to be pretty. The luminous, picturesque orbs studded the violet night sky in a way that stunned her.

Gold set up the cylinder thing—a telescope—on a tripod. Crystal observed him and said, "You seem to be rather enamored with the stars."

Gold sent her a sly glance. "Just another one of my hobbies. But yeah, I am. I asked Sapph to put stars in her song, and—whaddaya know?—she did. But c'mere, look through the telescope."

She did, and found it was aimed right at the moon, which took up virtually the entire circle of vision she was given through the device. "Wah…the moon is so _huge_!" She bit her lip after she'd said that, picking up on how stupid she must have sounded.

She heard Gold chuckle, and then heard him add, "The full moon's tomorrow night."

"On Valentine's Day?"

"Yeah, I guess so. I'd forgotten what day it was."

Crystal pulled back from the lens. "Valentine's Day is the most pointless of all holidays."

Gold scoffed. "I didn't take you for _that _kind of girl. The one who hates on the lovey-dovey holidays. Then again, maybe I should have…But humour me for a moment." He stepped away from the telescope and laid down in the grass. Staring at her expectantly.

Crystal groaned and laid down next to him, feeling the grass brush against her coat. She opted to focus on the beautiful sky above, not how close the beautiful boy next to her was.

"See," Gold went on, "I agree. Valentine's Day is just a fake holiday, made for advertisement and to give people an excuse to act totally irrational. But I like to think about it less as all that and more as a state of mind. Think about it; people's hearts swell this time of year because it's Valentine's, and they get more courageous. More daring. There's nothing about the _actual _day that makes them this way; it's just the idea of Valentine's Day put into their head that gets people so crazy. In a way, it's like constellations. There aren't _really _shapes in the stars. They didn't form that way on purpose. But since we're down here, with such a good view, we play connect-the-dots with giant balls of fire and gas that are millions of light-years away from us. Look. There's Orion's belt. Just three little specks in the distance. Who would have ever thought that they could be a belt?"

Crystal chuckled. "There's Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor."

"Ah! The girl knows her stars!" Gold exclaimed brightly. He then proceeded to point out a bunch of different constellations, including ones that Crystal hadn't even known existed, much less known where to find them: Cassiopeia, Hydra, Canis Minor, Canis Major, Draco, Eridanus, Auriga, Cepheus, Perseus, Triangulum, and, of course, Pegasus.

_Gold is so strange,_ she thought, sneaking a peek at him through her peripheral vision as he pointed out the stars, forming constellations as easily as a game of connect-the-dots. _Nobody would ever really think that someone as popular and, well, obnoxious at him could actually be so dynamic. He's actually a musician and an astronomer as well…_

Spontaneously, Crystal stumbled upon a revelation. "You're a scientist too," she marveled.

Gold turned his head to look at her, and she did the same. "What do you mean by that?"

"I don't know." Unable to stare into those amber eyes, which flashed with some emotion she didn't recognize, Crystal turned back to the starry heavens. "It's just that I'm in Sciences Club with Silver. He prefers physics, while I like biology a lot. My twin sister, Lyra, likes to cook, which I always considered as some rough variation of chemistry." She thought back on Platinum's cupcake and restrained a smile. "And my younger sister, Lee, has wanted to be a marine biologist before she even knew what it was. And here you are, a first-rate astronomer."

Gold caught on and laughed. "Crystal Hiradaira, you are surrounded by nerds."

"Nerds are the best kinds of people." She turned back to him.

"Touché," he agreed. And then they just sort of stared at each other for a while. No words needed.

* * *

**Gold's car  
7:52 P.M.**

"So…um…you're not even really going to ask where I'm going?" Crystal questioned, slightly amused.

"Oh! Right. Where would that be?"

Crystal rolled her eyes as they continued to drive back into the city. Lights passed them by in a whir that mesmerized her, but it didn't compare to the spectacle she'd witnessed just minutes earlier.

"Um…the city hospital…"

Surprisingly, the only question Gold asked was, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah; I'm visiting," she explained. And he didn't question her further.

He pulled up eventually beside the hospital and for a moment before either of them spoke, there was this strange sort of silence and suddenly Crystal felt like Gold was going to kiss her. But as soon as she thought that, she mentally slapped herself for thinking like that. _Why would he even do that? What the hell am I even thinking?_

So quickly she stepped out from the car and as she was closing the door, added, "Thank you for driving me," because she was polite, and because she was sincere, "and thank you for showing me the stars."

She ignored how utterly fluttery her heart felt as he smiled. "Any time, Crys."

* * *

**Friday, February 14****th****  
School hallway  
11:47 A.M.**

Crystal was on her way to lunch when he kidnapped her.

She'd just returned from her French class, and she was shutting the rickety door of her locker when suddenly, Gold appeared looking just as dashing as usual, and with that same sly, stupid grin as always.

"This is your lunch period, right?" he asked.

"How do you know?"

"Two days ago, right now, you were holding a lunch bag," he explained. "And today, we're going on an adventure."

She stared at him doubtfully. "On Valentine's Day?"

He shrugged. "Why not? It's only a state of mind, after all. Why not do something a little crazy?"

"How about no."

And therefore, Gold lifted her up, right in the middle of the hallway, and through her over his shoulder as easily as if she were a sack of feathers.

And, therefore, she screamed _loudly _as he trooped down the hallway. Other students stared at them like they were aliens, and Gold waved happily at them, as Crystal continued to screech.

Within minutes, Crystal was unwillingly inserted back into the passenger's seat of Gold's car, and he was driving away from the school, pleased with himself.

Crystal crossed her arms. "You're horrible."

He threw his head back laughing goofily, as if this were all some very amusing situation to him. Which, in fact, it was. "I believe that's up for debate." As they drove through the mostly-vacant city streets aimlessly, the smile slid from Gold's face. "Wait…hold up." He slowed to a stop beside a brunette kid, who looked like an eighth grader. The boy was just walking alone alongside the street. "Black, are you ditching school?" Gold asked him.

The boy blinked. "Yes. Isn't that what you're doing?"

To Crystal, Gold explained, "This kid is my neighbour. Sapphire Birch's kid brother, actually." To Black, Gold clarified, "Not quite. I just happen to be taking an academic leave of absence for educational purpose. I'm not 'ditching'. I'm showing Miss Hiradaira here the world!"

"Hiradaira?" The boy looked appalled. "You're White's sister?"

"_White_?" Crystal questioned. "You mean Whitlea?!"

Whitlea Hiradaira was Crystal and Lyra's younger sister by about three years. Crystal and Lyra had taken to calling her "Lee" but apparently Black had given her another nickname. She had Crystal's glinting cerulean eyes and Lyra's chocolaty tresses, though in a darker hue. Instead of duel pigtails, she always opted for just one big, fluffy one. Since she was young, Whitlea had been ill, diagnosed with cancer before she could even spell her last name.

"Yeah!" Black replied with a grin. "Oh man, White's told me so much about you. I was just on my way to see her."

"Need a ride?" Gold offered while Crystal cringed and speculated, "On _Valentine's Day_?"

And so that was how they ended up driving to the hospital again ("My sister is a cancer patient," Crystal had explained quickly to Gold, "that's why you dropped me off there yesterday.")

As Gold was driving, singing along to the radio without a care in the world, Crystal twisted around in her seat to look at Black. "How do you know my sister, anyways?"

"She's in my class at school. She only attends when she can, yeah? I take notes for her when she misses class."

To which Gold interjected, "Believe it or not, but the sibling to Sapphire Birch is actually something of a super-genius," and then returned to his song.

Black nodded. "And so once when I dropped them off to her, she just looked at me and said, 'You pass your classes with _that _sort of penmanship?'" He snickered. "And I thought she was funny. Yeah, maybe a bit bossy, but I like that she's not at all self-pitying. I started to talk to her whenever I dropped the notes off—I pass the hospital on my way home anyways—and we became friends."

The story seemed to be true, but Crystal still squinted at him. "And she has no problem with this."

"She's never stopped me before," he answered.

"And you like her."

"Very much so."

"In _that _way?"

"Yes ma'am."

"And she knows this?"

Black shrugged. "I dunno."

Gold sent Black a glance over his shoulder. "Do you like science, Black?"

"Eyes on the road!" Crystal shrieked in alarm.

Black's deep brown eyes lit up. "Yeah. I like psychology a lot."

Gold turned to Crystal. "Study of the mind. Kid's a scientist. There you have it."

"EYES ON THE ROAD!"

As Gold once again faced forwards, changing the radio station and singing along to a new tune (this time in falsetto) Crystal once again faced Black. He seemed slightly fidgety—probably because of Crystal—but there didn't seem to be much wrong with him. Gold had known him since they were young, he was very intelligent, and he liked Whitlea.

Crystal sighed. "I don't like you, Black Birch," she told him. "Not one bit. I think you're nothing but trouble, but…I think that trouble isn't completely bad for my sister. She worries a lot. She, unfortunately, inherited seriousness from me." Gold snickered at this. Crystal elbowed him and went on, "And if you're risking punishment and ditching school just to go see her…then you must really care a lot. So I give you my blessing." Her expression darkened. "But if you break her heart, I will personally break your face."

Black beamed, unfazed by this last part. "Thank you."

* * *

**Gold's car  
12:34 P.M.**

After they dropped Black off—

(neither of them were able to see how adorably Whitlea reacted to Black's unexpected visit, which was quite the pity because she completely lit up when she saw him. She didn't even bother to scold him for missing classes. It was really quite the spectacle.)

—Gold asked Crystal where she wanted to go.

"Back to school," she answered curtly. "I'm pretty sure my lunch period is over."

Gold shrugged. "Fine then. To school we go."

Crystal found something _very_ suspicious in the way that he consented without argument. Of course, he had had a plan. Crystal spent the next half hour groaning at her stupidity; Gold just drove loops all over the city, never even nearing the school.

He explained, "I'm taking the long way around." Each time, she rolled her eyes and he beamed in a very gloating manner. She couldn't very well get out of the car; not while it was moving and while they were no where near their school. And she could very well do much about his driving. What she didn't say, however, was that she _didn't _really want to do anything. She liked the adrenaline rush she got from skipping. She liked that she was sitting in a warm car on a frosty Friday, listening to her newfound friend singing loudly to the radio and occasionally passing the same old coffee shop and suggesting they go in, to which she objected each time.

Eventually, when Crystal wasn't paying attention, the car stopped. She gazed up, confused. Gold was staring straight ahead. They were back at their school.

Perplexed, Crystal stepped out of the car and Gold did the same. They were parked a little ways away so that no one would be able to spot them from inside. Gold left the driver's seat door open.

"You brought us back," she observed. He approached her without looking at her or saying a word. "What are you doing?" But just as she was speaking the final word, Gold wrapped his arms firmly around her and brought her to him, holding her close.

For a moment they stood like that; Crystal with her eyes wide, and Gold staring grimly off at nothing. On such a frigid day, his warmth rushed into her, and she didn't want to pull away.

But he did first. Finally he stared down at her and said, "I'm letting you go."

Before she had a chance to react, he was gone; he got into the car and drove away.

* * *

**Gold's car  
1:15 P.M.**

Gold had barely inched down the street when he got a call on his phone. He glanced over and saw the caller identification: _Crystal._ He went back and forth on whether he should answer it, and opted to let it ring. He just had to keep driving. He was a shark; he had to keep moving.

But as soon as his phone stopped buzzing, she called again.

Gold finally answered on the sixth time she called, sensing that she wasn't going to stop. But before he could even get out a "hello", she screamed, "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ABOUT?!"

Gold cursed silently. This is what he had been afraid of. "Look, we only, like, actually met the other day, right? We're not even really that good of friends, right? So it doesn't even matter."

"CLEARLY IT MATTERS TO ME."

_She sounds like she's walking, _he observed. _To where, though?_

"Why did you drive away?"

He shoved a hand through his messy hair. He couldn't take this. He pulled over and his car shuddered to a stop. "Because I can't be around you, okay?"

_Now she sounds like she's running. Why the hell's she running?_

"What does that even mean, Gold?" she asked. He tried to pretend he didn't hear the twinge of hurt in her voice.

"I've only officially known you for three days, and…" _Do I tell her?_ "And I'm already falling for you. And it's weird and it's wrong, because you've got a boyfriend already and I barely even know you, so I shouldn't just be feeling like this, but for the record it's your fault for being so damn adorable all the time." _I should stop now._

"Gold."

"Yeah?"

"Turn around."

"Why the hell would I—"

"TURN AROUND, DAMN YOU."

Gold twisted around and glanced out the back window of the car. Instantly, his eyes widened. Crystal was running up the sidewalk towards him. _She was following me. _He hadn't gotten very far and she'd seen the way he'd gone.

Gold leapt out of the car, and raced out to her. Tears streamed down her face and dripped onto the ground, glinting like falling stars. She punched his chest.

"How could you?" she sobbed. "How could you not even bother to realize that Falkner broke up with me? How could you not realize how annoyingly thought-consuming and—I hate saying this—how _actually _charming you are? How could you not even _consider _the possibility that I maybe—just maybe—like you a lot more than you think I do?" She took a shuddering breath. "And it's weird and it's wrong, because I just recently got out of a relationship, and I barely even know you, so I shouldn't be feeling like this, but for the record it's your fault for being so damn beautiful all the time."

He stared at her incredulously. She wiped her eyes and let out a squeak when suddenly Gold's lips came crashing down on hers. For a moment she was shocked, but when he pulled back, she through her arms around his neck, and said, "You're such an idiot."

To which he replied, "Sometimes idiots can be the best kinds of people."

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

**Coffee shop  
2:24 P.M.**

They didn't return to school for the rest of the day, but instead drove around in circles singing along to the radio and looking up constellations.

Finally, once school would have been let out, they went to the coffee shop Gold had passed so many times earlier. Surprisingly, four seniors (whom Crystal hadn't even known were friends, though she'd heard something before she was so rudely dragged from school about Green spontaneously confessing to Silver's sister, Blue, for no real apparent reason other than to cause a huge dramatic scene on Valentine's Day) were there. Crystal sent a message to Lyra telling her to come to the coffee shop, and that Crystal had a _lot _to tell her.

Lyra arrived, beaming like usual, arm-in-arm with Silver. Crystal giggled. For once he looked actually…really happy. Not grumpy or moody. When he and Lyra looked at each other, their eyes both held a soft happiness within them. A blossoming love. It was enchanting, really.

They sat side-by-side at a table with Crystal and Gold, but one of the seniors—Silver's sister, Blue—came over to ruffle Silver's hair. "Ah, Blue-sempai!" Lyra greeted her excitedly.

Blue grinned mischievously, and whispered (loud enough for the rest of the table to hear) to Silver, "Hold on to this one, Silv. She's a keeper." And then she was off, back to her fellow seniors who sat in stools at the counter.

The quartet of juniors relayed the day's events to one another, each having their different stories to tell, but all four laughing all through the afternoon.

* * *

_A/N: The games that the kids are playing at Gold's shoe-house is called "Gushnum". My dad and my aunts and uncles played it when they were kids. The game is that one person has a blanket over them and becomes "Gushnum" and that person sweeps the blanket, looking for the other players' feet to see where they are. Gushnum tries to swipe at the other players, while they attack Gushnum with pillows, fists, et cetera. When I heard that story, I began calling my one uncle "Uncle Gushnum". Sooo..._  
_Also, the song. I chose the song first and then built the whole stargazing thing around that. BUT the song bears resemblence to a little poem I think you'd like...see, my pal Vy has this AMAZING story, and in it this adorable little poem that is mentioned once, about stars and wishes. The story is called Fate and Flowers and YOU ALL SHOULD READ AND REVIEW IT BECAUSE IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND DESERVES WAY MORE LOVE THAN THIS STORY BECAUSE IT IS FABULOUS AND ADORABLE AND CONTAINS SHIPPING AND BLUE'S ANTICS AND GOLD AS A FREAKING WEREWOLF AND I THINK WE ALL NEED TO SEE THAT AT SOME POINT SO GO READ IT HERE IS THE LINK:_

_ s/9618627/1/Fate-and-Flowers_

_And that's all for my endnote.  
__Arigato! ^-^_


	3. Part III: Of Strongholds and Snowballs

**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to anything.**

_A/N: Wow! I didn't think I'd be able to do it, but here is Part III! Did anyone get any valentines today? I sort-of did. My crazy friends were my valentines. And, by the way, I keep trying to put a heart in this message, but it always comes out as just a three and doesn't show the other sign...grrr...Unfortunately, Part III is a lot shorter than the rest. This is mainly because I've been writing the other two since like the start of the month, and I wrote the majority of this all today. And so now my eyes hurt, but it was so worth it! Can't believe I finished!  
But anyways, I wish you ALL a wonderful Valentine's Day (or just a wonderful day. Depending upon when you read this)  
Rant over! Read on! 3  
-Silvia_

* * *

**Part III: Of Strongholds and Snowballs**

**Wednesday, February 12th  
First period  
****7:18 A.M.**

Wally Mukaido came stumbling into the room, spluttering and panting desperately. He supported himself on the desk of Sapphire Birch and held up a single paper from the school newspaper.

Sapphire scanned the paper and her heart skipped a beat in withheld elation, but almost instantly afterwards she was flooded with apprehension and thought, _Oh crap. Wally found out. He saw it and found out. EVERYTHING IS OVER.. _But she had panicked for nothing.

"Sapph, look!" Wally exclaimed in a hushed tone. "Those Greene Girls are having a poetry contest!"

Sapphire breathed out in relief. So he hadn't noticed.

For a moment she didn't register what he had said, but once she did, her eyebrows shot into her bangs. "Poetry contest?"

"Yeah." Wally slid into his seat beside her, still breathless. He needed to take his inhaler more. "It's for Valentine's Day. You should enter it."

"Enter something for the newspaper? Not me." She inwardly cringed at her hypocrisy. "And Valentine's Day? Isn't that, like, two weeks away?"

Wally stared at her as if she had ridden into the classroom on an asteroid all the way from Saturn. "It's on Friday."

"And today is…?"

"Wednesday."

"Oh. I see. So _that's _why people are being so especially lovey-dovey and annoying about who-likes-who or I-like-them-and-they-don't-like-me and all that useless shit."

"Pretty much."

Sapphire tapped her chin. "I wonder why people never mistake us for a couple."

"I guess we just don't give off that type of vibe," Wally replied sheepishly (but then again everything he said sounded sheepish.) "We seem more like cousins."

"I'd rather you to be my cousin," Sapphire agreed. "I hate my cousins. May and Max. And everyone always mistakes me for May when I'm nothing like that irritating sissy!"

Wally laughed lightly, used to Sapphire's moody behaviour. But the smile slipped from his face as he watched her leaf through her algebra-two notebook and noticed that a large clump of pages had been savagely ripped out. He pointed it out. "What are all those missing pages?"

Sapphire flushed. "A letter," she answered in a very disgruntled manner.

"Must have been one heck of a letter," Wally remarked, not sold by the act. He figured it was just another poem—an excessively long one, though, or maybe multiple poems.

"Mukaido! Birch!" barked the teacher and they snapped to attention as class began.

But Sapphire didn't pay much heed to the lesson. She flipped absent-mindedly through her notebook (which, okay, didn't have all that much notes in it) and stopped on one of her poems. Nobody really knew this about Sapphire—other than Wally, who she probably trusted most—but she really did enjoy poetry. She had a whole book of famous poets and their works when she was younger, and she supposed that was what had influenced her.

She had felt like such a nerd when she had written the poem she'd stopped on. She had little inspiration—her life was particularly uneventful—so often times her poems were based off of stories or things she made up.

But in this case, she'd based a poem off her favourite manga, chapter two-hundred-fifty-nine, where her favourite characters—a tsundere fighter and a sensitive lover—finally confessed to one another on a place called "Mirage Island". But to her dismay, the shounen had further prolonged her frustration over their slow-moving relationship by making one of the characters forget about it. Despite being annoyed, Sapphire had still wished silently to herself that she might have a love like that one day. Her eyes scrolled through the messily-scrawled poem again:

_A merciless mirage,  
Gave hope where there was fear.  
Gave love where there once was hatred,  
All through the days of drear._

_But all along I suspected,  
Nay—I knew we would return,  
To disadvantaged theatre,  
Where dragons swiftly burned._

_A call resounded mine  
Away into the sea—  
the greatest of fights erupted  
Nowhere near me._

_For I was sheltered greatly,  
Blazed nevertheless,  
So when he called for aid,  
I broke right through the glass._

_Struck, the dance went along.  
Our saviour, powerful but ill.  
Roars of beasts sounded out,  
Thunder rolled the hills._

_After rivalry and ruin,  
I stood, holding death.  
And gazed at the distant past,  
Beamed when I heard breath._

_Confrontation cluttered to a close,  
But I would soon find,  
It was only I who remembered;  
The scene slipped from his mind._

_Only then the isle's name concurred—  
we were safe, but I detained tears.  
For the merciless mirage I created,  
Caused love to disappear._

The teacher snapped a yardstick on her desk. "Pay attention, Miss Birch," she snapped. Sapphire nodded and pretended to take notes. Algebra-two was insistently irritating. Sure, she could get the formulas and all, but did her damned teacher have to explain them all so weirdly?

She glanced out the window at the fields outside, wishing they weren't so snow-dusted so that her gym class had no excuse to stay inside. But alas, indoors it was, and indoors wasn't so bad. The bad part was waiting through sedentary classes, waiting until gym when she could actually move and run and do _something._

She sighed quietly—and rather wistfully—at the snowcapped trees in the distance and the pristine white field before turning back to her notebook.

She turned a page and decided notes were overrated. Instead, she would do a little "assignment" she had taken up.

See, Sapphire was in the Manga Club—another thing, amongst her poetry, that she was reluctant to admit—at her school. Their activities included, critiquing, reading, and creating manga. However, when it came to drawing, Sapphire, in a word, sucked. Her drawings sucked so much that the Suck Creatures of Planet Suck wouldn't have even accepted them. Even her stick figures sucked. If that were possible. And it was.

Therefore, Sapphire wrote for the stories and got paired up with a freshman called Platinum Berlitz, who couldn't write a story for her life, but could draw a masterpiece, and spent her Tuesdays and Thursdays in Sciences Club.

One of the dynamic duo's favourite things to focus manga on was music. Neither of them particularly knew much about it, but both enjoyed listening to it and writing about it. Since it was an outlet that attracted so many people, the duo figured they could incorporate it in their works as well. Platinum was enthralled with getting to draw so many musical instruments—each one was a new challenge, after all—and so many glittering scenes where notes flew through the air along with sparkles and other random pretty accents that flitted through the pages of manga. Correspondingly, Sapphire indulged herself in writing about such a passionate topic that both had begun a manga together pertaining to music.

So Sapphire brushed off her page, flattened out the creases, took up her pen, and began writing a verse to use in her manga. She had no idea how a melody was supposed to work out; she was just in charge of writing the words. In reality, it was really just like writing a poem. She had her virtuoso sempai, Gold Okami, come up with the melodies and actual music anyways. She didn't particularly _need_ actual music, but Gold claimed to enjoy it. And he had recently made a request for a topic of a song.

Sapphire took up her pen and started out by writing "starlight"…

* * *

**Woodshop  
****10:13 A.M.**

Ruby liked to call his fifth period class "The Woodshop Council".

Woodshop was initially an elective he was concerned about choosing—so much sawdust!—but in actuality, it turned out to be great fun. Ruby was able to quickly grasp the concepts of it. It really was similar to sewing; he just had to learn how to use the machines involved and the way to piece things together and it was simple. Plus, his two friends, Wally Mukaido and Emerald Kusheida, were both in the class with him and so they could talk as they worked, hence The Woodshop Council.

Emerald would start out by trying to have a conversation about something like sports, but Wally and Ruby would get off topic onto something else in which Emerald would interject:

"WOULD YA TWO STOP GOSSIPING LIKE A PAIR OF SCHOOLGIRLS?!"

In which Wally and Ruby would sigh and return to a safer conversation.

But on that particular February day, Wally asked out of the blue, "So Ruby, have you got a valentine?"

Emerald groaned, muttering something about "putrid gossip" and "ears are bleeding" and "chattering goats".

Ruby furrowed his eyebrows. "Why would you ask that?"

Wally shrugged. "I was just talking about it with Sapphire."

Sapphire. She was a jock, strangely, and Wally's good friend. Ruby had known her since freshman year, when she'd been in his art class. It hadn't really ended well. She had accidentally spilled red paint upon Ruby, then tried to laugh it off by saying red was his colour. Of course, being a hardcore neat freak, Ruby got angry at all the pain on himself, and therefore spilled blue paint on her.

Needless to say, they weren't the best at getting along. But Ruby talked with her often and played nice, for the sake of poor Wally.

"Wait, what were you talking about with her?" Ruby asked, misunderstanding and wondering for a moment if Sapphire and Wally were talking about _him_.

Wally shrugged. "Just that Valentine's Day is coming up."

Emerald turned to them and held up what he had been working on proudly; a piece of wood curved elegantly to look like a heart, then sawed haphazardly in half, so it was a _broken _heart. "Like it?" he asked.

Wally laughed nervously and returned to his work, while Ruby just sort of stared and shook his head, a tad frightened. Emerald laughed maniacally.

* * *

**School gymnasium  
****1:42 P.M.**

Ruby hated gym class.

"Oi! Look out!"

He had time just to hear the warning before a football slammed into the back of his head. So of course he plummeted onto the gym floor and half the gym class laughed at him. He wasn't not sure there was a way to fall after getting hit by a football hurtling towards you that wasn't even slightly amusing. But if there was one thing Ruby hated, it was to be laughed at.

With a venomous look he rose and turned around to see a girl with shoulder-length caramel locks and deep navy eyes bolting towards him. He sighed and handed her the football.

"You hit me."

"It was an accident!" she claimed as the other students began going back to their current activity; passing footballs between one another because the physical education teacher couldn't think of anything better to do with them.

Ruby rolled his eyes. "Right. Because you 'accidentally' hit me from the other side of the gym."

Sapphire returned his glare. "Why do you think that every time I accidentally do something wrong that it was on purpose?"

Ruby pretended to be thinking of a comeback for a moment, before he asked, "Hey, do you know how to spell accidentally?" Ruby didn't realize just how sore a subject that was—Sapphire often struggled with grades—and so he didn't expect to have blown such a fuse.

"OF COURSE I KNOW HOW TO SPELL IT! AND STOP CHANGING THE SUBJECT!" she fumed.

"Aisaka! Birch!" called the gym teacher, "Go back to passing!"

Sapphire gave Ruby one last defiant stare before she turned and promptly marched away. Ruby turned back to his own partner in passing, Wally, who did not exactly excel in gym class (Ruby, on the other hand, _could _have excelled greatly if he tried, and he did not, because of course that would make him all sweaty by the end of the period.) Wally's troubles mostly pertained to his asthma, which wasn't really something he could help. He also had a real talent for catching sicknesses, so flu season was not a very happy time for a guy like him.

As Ruby was passing the ball with Wally—well, _Ruby _was passing; Wally missing the catch, retrieving it, then throwing it feebly back (not that Ruby minded)—Ruby noticed the smuggest little smile on his friend's face.

"Oh, what is it you feel the need to giggle like a schoolgirl?" Ruby asked, a bit too sharply. _I need to stop being so prickly, _he decided.

Wally shrugged it off. "Nothing." Ruby stared at him until he laughed and finally answered, "It's you and Sapph. You act like you hate each other but you don't." He missed the ball when Ruby tossed it.

"What are you talking about?" Ruby asked. "We _do _hate each other." A small part of him knew that that was a lie. He had known Sapphire for almost as long as he'd known Wally; after all, Wally and Sapph were good friends.

"There isn't just a little, tiny, near-impossibly small part inside of you that likes her, even at all?" Wally flung the ball back, but it landed just before Ruby's feet. "So close…" Ruby heard him mumble to himself.

Ruby compared different things to say that could describe how he felt towards Sapphire, and finally settled upon, "She's just frustrating. We disagree so much."

Wally shrugged again and let it slide as Ruby tossed the ball again.

* * *

**Forest****  
****2:27 P.M.**

It wasn't even really a decision—more like an instinct, some sort of unspoken tradition—that Ruby went to the stronghold after school when he wanted to clear his head (which hurt quite a lot after Sapphire Birch—a starting player on the _boys' _football team for whatever crazy reason—had hit him in the head with a football.)

"The stronghold" wasn't so much a fortified fort rather than a rickety old tree house in the middle of the forest edging the city on one side. The nature of it contrasted greatly with the buildings so nearby. Ruby had liked to explore the forests when he was young, and even though his interests changed as he got older, his fondness for the forest never did. When he was ten, he'd found an amazingly-formed tree; sturdy, with low branches cupping an alcove. It was in the middle of a clearing, just begging to be built on. And so Ruby built a tree house with his father (one of the few activities his gruff father actually participated in with him.)

Not many people even knew it was there, but he'd given directions to Wally, Emerald, and, mistakenly, Sapphire (mostly because the barbaric girl already treaded his forest paths enough, and he was sort of forced to show it to her one weekend when she wanted to race him in the middle of the woods. He told her the directions only once, but damn, that girl could remember _anything._)

Of course, Wally was a tad intimidated by the forest, and Emerald continuously demanded indifference towards Ruby or any of his other friends, meaning that the only one to really make use of the hideout was, unfortunately, Sapphire the wild child.

"So you're here today?" Sapphire asked, swinging out from the house, anchoring herself by the frame of the cut-out-window as Ruby approached.

"Yes." He rolled his eyes when he saw her appearance. "You need to wear a heavier jacket. Look all around you. It's snowing for Bill's sake! And you'll be warmer if you wear one that isn't so…tattered."

"But that would only weigh me down," Sapphire replied and crossed her arms.

Thankfully, the two didn't usually cross paths like this. Ruby used the stronghold when he just wanted to clear his mind or stop by. Sapphire used it as a base when she went swinging through the forest like a female Tarzan (as Ruby mused.)

Of course, when they _did _happen to stumble upon each other, they bickered as usual. Ruby sighed, climbing up the tree past her into the stronghold and sitting down—on a stool! He'd never sit on the dirty wooden floor in his uniform pants!—with a sigh. He just wasn't in the mood for an argument.

Sapphire sat down on the ground without a second thought. Ruby inwardly cringed at how much dirt she was getting all over her clothes, but didn't want to start an entire war over it. She began trailing a hand through the dust. Ruby watched her confusedly. "What are you doing? Drawing a picture or something?"

"I am the _worst _artist you could ever come across," Sapphire stated assuredly.

Ruby rolled his eyes. "You're just being melodramatic. And I would know. I'm in the Drama Club."

"Right. I forgot you were a theatre sissy, Aisaka. Gimme some paper and I'll prove it to you."

Ruby fished his notebook out of his backpack along with a pencil. Sapphire ignored the lines of the paper or really any form of consideration and drew a circle (even her _circles _were bad. Squiggly and uneven) with three small stick figures standing on it. They were faceless, and she topped them off with antennae.

"There." She passed it to him.

Ruby stared at the notebook for a full ten seconds before he asked, "Okay, I give up. What is this?"

"It's Planet Suck," Sapphire explained, "where all of my drawings come from because they suck so much. Only, they _come _from the planet because the Suck Creatures," here she pointed to the crudely drawn stick figures, "rejected them. And now the drawings cannot return to their homeland. Ergo, they suck so much that they were banished from a whole planet of things that suck." She gazed up when she noticed he was staring, perplexed. "That enough of an explanation for you, Aisaka?"

Ruby blinked. "I take it back. Your drawings do suck." His eyebrows. "And you don't have to address me so formally. I've known you since last year and we both have Wally as a friend. It's not as if we're strangers. You can call me by my first name."

Sapphire flushed. "No way."

"Am I embarrassing you?" He grinned, amused at having the upper-hand this time.

"No," she objected, "it's just weird." She wrinkled her nose in a very disgruntled manner (and Ruby realized with a jolt that he found this habit of hers to be absolutely adorable, and he decided for a moment to push that thought to the side. _Far _to the side.)

So, Ruby changed the subject. "So I hear you're good friends with Gold Okami."

"Jealous much?" She grinned toothily, baring her fangs.

Ruby rolled his eyes. "As if." Though a part of him wondered if he needed to be jealous. "I'm just wondering. I know him from orchestra. He sits in with the string players and plays piano for us." Ruby had played violin since he could figure out how to hold it.

Sapphire raised her eyebrows. "Huh. Yeah, we're friends. And he's good at piano, which at least isn't a prissy instrument like the violin."

"How is violin 'prissy'?" Ruby questioned. "And that's not the only string instrument in the world. There are plenty that aren't prestigious." He lifted a tarp from an old table sitting in the little house to reveal a very old electric guitar.

Sapphire's eyebrows shot into her bangs. "You keep that out here?"

He shrugged. "It's not acoustic so the tuning won't get messed up by changes in the weather. And the electronics are broken so it's not as if I can plug it in anywhere. And besides, I have another one." He picked it up and then regarded her curiously. "Do you play an instrument?"

"Not for my life. And Gold told me I sing like a dying chicken."

"Wow. Guess you really do hail from Planet Suck."

"You have no idea."

Ruby strummed a few chords out experimentally, and then played a riff. The tuning wasn't horrible. Suddenly, though, Sapphire cursed. "What?" Ruby asked her.

She gave him a deflated look. "I know a song…but I don't remember the chords."

"What song?"

"Nothing you've heard of. Never mind."

Ruby shrugged. "Well, figure out the chords and I can play it next time."

Sapphire felt herself flush. They so rarely crossed paths at the stronghold. _And he just said there would be a next time…_It already made her excited.

They parted ways soon after, and she knew one thing for certain.

* * *

**Thursday, February 13th  
Forest  
****5:19 P.M.**

Sapphire found Ruby at the stronghold, repairing a loose floorboard. Silently thanking fate, she raced over, waving a sheet of notepaper. "Aisaka!" she called but he didn't appear to hear. "Aisaka! Are you deaf? AISAKA!"

She swung herself up into the wooden structure and shouted right in his ear, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

He flinched and asked, "Have you been taking shouting lessons from Emerald or something? And I'm not answering you if you're going to call me Aisaka."

Sapphire sighed and flopped down onto the floor lazily, handing him the piece of paper.

"What's this?" he asked, glancing at the hastily-written letters.

"Chords to the song. I got Gold to write them down for me."

Ruby set them down carefully and whipped out the guitar. He tried strumming in a simple four-beat pattern, but Sapphire had to correct him and shot him the beat. Sapphire smiled as she listened to the old guitar play the familiar chords to her song. She was so into the music that she didn't even notice when she began to sing the bridge:

_"And all I have wished for  
Is my heart;  
Hidden among the stars.  
But you are brighter than they ever will be,  
So save me  
Now."_

Ruby glanced over at the normally-wild girl, surprised. Sapphire blushed, realizing she'd been singing, and wondered if somewhere within him, Ruby could tell that the song was for him. _He probably can't, _she told herself. _He probably just thinks I'm a weirdo singing in a tree._

Ruby held out a note and smiled. "You know, when you're not shouting all the time you have a decent voice."

"Um…thanks?" Sapphire glanced out at the clearing. "Hey Ruby, look! It's started to snow!"

And so it had. Flurries of twinkling snowflakes tumbled down ever-so-gently, landing softly on the already-fallen blankets of white. Sapphire hopped out of the stronghold (Ruby opted to climb down "like a civilized person," as he'd shouted to his wild companion.)

In retort, Sapphire jokingly tossed a fluffy snowball at him. Ruby tossed one back.

And thus began war.

* * *

**Mini golf course  
****5:31 P.M.**

Wally glanced up from his putt at the drifting snow. "I wonder what Ruby and Sapphire are doing right now."

Emerald grunted, rolled his sharp jade eyes, and sunk his shot. "Oho! I'm totally _creaming _you, Mukaido!"

Wally smiled and putt his golf ball gently down a slope.

* * *

**Forest  
****5:32 P.M.**

Ruby ducked behind a tree and simultaneously scooped up a wad of snow, dodging shots from Sapphire. Quick as a cat he darted between trees, firing snowballs at her, wind whirring all about.

Finally, though, as he jumped and was arcing midair, a snowball caught him square in the face. When it cleared from his eyes, he could see Sapphire standing a distance away at the center of the clearing, covering her mouth with both hands. "I didn't mean to…"

"Oh, you're going to pay for that one, Birch!"

Sapphire half-screamed, half-squealed and whirled around to speed away, but Ruby charged at her and caught her, tumbling downwards with the momentum. They rolled onto the ground and finally came to a stop by the stronghold. Ruby shoved himself up and realized he was on top of her.

For a moment, he just sort of stared down into her entrancing navy eyes, and she stared right back up at him, not saying a word. He didn't get up right away because he didn't necessarily want to, but eventually he rolled off and cleared his throat. She sat up and did the same.

And awkward silence ensued. Sapphire said sheepishly, "I should probably go. Good luck fixing that floorboard." And she proceeded to walk from the clearing.

* * *

**Friday, February 14th**  
**School hallway  
****9:52 A.M.**

It was the morning of Valentine's Day. Sapphire couldn't help but give herself false hope, even though she knew nothing would happen.

Of course, that didn't mean that _nothing _happened. Two seniors apparently had a _very _dramatic confession scene that morning (which Sapphire missed. She was in another part of the school, sadly.) One thing she did witness was her friend Platinum's boyfriend, Diamond, bring her a rose. Platinum gave him a look so full of love—one which Sapphire had not thought Platinum to be capable of making.

"Happy Forever Alone Day!" Emerald greeted her cheerfully during fourth period, as if he were wishing her a happy new year instead of something so dismal.

"You seem to be having _way _too much fun saying stuff like that," she noted.

"I enjoy such a day when the people who _aren't _being happy are being depressed."

"You are one weird little dude."

"DON'T CALL ME LITTLE!"

Sapphire had eventually distracted herself and managed to stop thinking about a certain garnet-eyed boy, when all of the sudden, he appeared by her locker, smiling at her. "Hey Sapph, I have a question for you."

Sapphire gazed up at him, perplexed. "Shoot. But not literally. That would hurt."

He rolled his eyes. He seemed to do that a _lot. _"So, you and I are pretty different right? Total opposites?"

"Yeah, why?" She was very unsure of where this conversation was leading.

As they started off walking down the hallway, he went on, "I was just thinking about what would happen if two opposites combined. Like, what do you think they would call it if they combined a lion with a dove?"

Sapphire's eyes widened, getting what he implicated. _We're opposites. Lions and doves are opposites. I'm wild; the lion. He's refined; the dove. He means _us_._ She tried to ignore the obvious combination of the two names: "love".

And suddenly Sapphire was terrified. Terrified that Ruby would find out about her feelings and not feel the same, and that maybe right now he was just joking. Terrified that maybe he would like her, but then somehow it would all fall apart and leave her brokenhearted. Terrified of how strongly she felt.

"I-I don't really know," she stuttered out, and then sped off through the crowd of students crawling along to their classes.

Ruby stared after her, perplexed.

* * *

**Throughout school…**

Sapphire avoided him all day.

* * *

**Coffee shop  
****2:35 P.M.**

Ruby entered the coffee shop and heard the bell tinkling overhead. It taunted him with its cheerful jingle when he was so dismal. He glanced around to see some upperclassmen from his school there; a quartet of seniors at the counter, and a quartet of juniors at a table. Both groups laughing jovially. Mocking his depression.

_Why did she run away like that?_ Ruby wondered. He needed coffee or something to clear his thoughts.

One of the seniors trotted over to him when she saw him standing in the doorway. "Ruby-pyon!" she squealed, clasping his hands in hers.

"Hi, Blue-sempai," he greeted, not really in the mood to communicate with someone as eccentric as his Blue.

But Blue dragged him over to sit with her senior friends, and introduced him in her bubbling manner. The seniors laughed at her behaviour—all except the grumpy-looking one, though he smiled lovingly at Blue—and tried to have a conversation with a sophomore, as strange as that was.

But then one of the seniors looked at him strangely. "Wait…you're Ruby Aisaka?"

"Yes." Ruby blinked, a little confused.

"Damn…I forgot to deliver a message," the senior replied, shoving his hand through his spiky raven hair. "Sapph sent me a text. She wanted me to tell you that she's sorry. And for some reason, she wanted me to show you something in the newspaper." He glanced at Blue, who perplexedly pulled the most recent paper out from her notebook (which was stuffed with them) and handed it to Red, who in turn flipped to a certain page and pointed at a certain sentence.

"**S.B. wrote a letter to us concerning how she has come to realize that she has feelings for a friend of hers, and she does not know how to deal with them, especially so very close to Valentine's Day.**"

Ruby was well aware of the column. After all, mostly everyone knew about The Greene Girls. But he was staring at the initials.

_S.B._

_Sapphire Birch._

Following that revelation, he slowly processed the rest of the sentence until he was standing there in that coffee shop with a bunch of seniors who were looking bemusedly at him (except for the grumpy one. Now he was just back to looking grumpy.)

And then he knew what had to be done.

"I have to go." Ruby handed the newspaper back to the seniors and raced out of the coffee shop, stopping only to grab his bike and mount. He peddled at a furious pace, thinking of the once place Sapphire might be.

_Sapphire…has feelings for me?_

Ruby let that sink in. It had to be about him. Why else would the seniors show that paper to him? Why else would Sapphire want him to see that she'd written a letter to The Greene Girls, unless it was about him?

He rode straight through the snow, straight through the woods on the trail he knew so well. _Come on…please be here, Sapph…_He _needed_ her to be there. He skidded to a stop before the stronghold.

The clearing was empty.

Ruby breathed out a sigh. _Of course. Of course. She just told Red to tell me she was sorry because she _is _sorry that she doesn't want to be with me._

But then he heard the distant creaking of wood, and glanced up to see that in the doorway of the stronghold stood Sapphire, her cheeks and nose bright red. He wondered how long she'd stood in the cold, waiting for him.

"I-I wrote a poem," she blurted suddenly and he drew closer. She hopped down, wringing her gloved hands together.

It took Ruby a moment to register that he was supposed to respond. He was temporarily distracted by the brutish beauty before him, the snow slowly falling and glittering all around her, piling on her head and shoulders, making her shine brighter than any star.

"Can I hear it?" he asked. He felt as though the moment was glass; if he stepped too close it might shatter before his eyes, but it was too incredible for him to walk away from.

Sapphire averted her eyes and nodded silently, looking uncharacteristically like an introvert. Time seemed suspended as she began to speak, mesmerizing him with her words.

_"Peculiar things occur all around,  
And I am left to wonder why  
It is that I simply cannot breathe  
Looking at the luminescent sky._

_Stars—I see them now for sure,  
Though they are blocked by city lights.  
They appear to me when I simply glance  
At your bright eyes._

_And though words never mean much,  
Simply sounds strung together,  
I hope the message carries through—  
During even stormy weather._

_If hope is the thing with feathers,  
Then heart is the thing with wings,  
We barrel down these treacherous paths,  
Not knowing what the future brings._

_But one thing is for certain, now,  
One thing is the truth.  
Despite logic or reasons, and no matter what,  
I love you, _Ruby-kun_."_

Ruby stared at her. "You called me by my first name."

"That I did," was all she got out before Ruby closed the distance between them and swept her into his arms.

"Sapph, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize how you felt all this time. I didn't realize how much I hurt you."

Sapphire leaned into his chest, for some reason elated when she heard him say her name. He smelled of pine needles, like the forest all around.

He held her slightly away and gazed down at her. "I think I love you too."

Sapphire laughed and pushed her hands into his hair. "Don't think." And then she pressed her lips against his and kissed him.

It was blissful and wonderful and heart-racing…

Up until Ruby was hit in the back with a snowball and heard a voice shout, "KEEP IT PG GUYS!"

Another voice scolded the first, "Gold! Stay out of this."

Ruby and Sapphire broke apart and turned round to see the upperclassmen from the café whooping and cheering. Blue stepped forward from them. With a smile she said, "We didn't mean to snoop—"

"Yes we did," interrupted her grumpy boyfriend.

"—but we happened to overhear that poem," Blue went on, "and it was absolutely _breathtaking. _So much better than any of the poems that have been sent in to us."

Sapphire's eyes grew to the size of dish plates. "You're…"

Blue beamed, enjoying this particular predicament greatly. "I'm Aoi." She pointed to the petite blonde behind her. "This is Kohaku."

"You…you answered my letter," she marveled. "But it's too late for me to submit a poem."

"Valentine's Day hasn't ended yet," small senior Yellow piped up. "And you're the clear winner."

Sapphire couldn't keep the grin from her face. "Thank you. Thank you so much!"

"That's great!" one of the juniors, Lyra, squealed. "But can we go back to the café?" She rubbed her arms. "I'm freezing out here!" Her redheaded, steel-eyed companion wrapped an arm around her, and the whole clump of high schoolers turned round and trailed back to the coffee shop for cocoa. Snow glittered and crunched under their feet. The sun set behind the forest, staining the sky an array of awe-striking colours.

And a quite vibrant Valentine's Day cluttered to a close.

* * *

_A/N: Roses are red, here's something new, violets are violet, NOT FREAKING BLUE.  
Here are some notes 'bout the chapter!  
__Oh, what? You guys think teachers don't snap yardsticks anymore? Some do. Sometimes. My old history teacher did, if someone wasn't paying attention. And now my new history teacher throws ducks at people...  
Okay. I think I used the word "adorable" way too many times. I was just going for a sweet, simple tone, and I think that word just expresses aspects of the story nicely. Ergo, "adorable".  
And um...yeah, I'm not really a poet. So if Sapph's poems were horrible, that's my fault...  
__AND THAT'S ALL FOR THIS STORY!  
__RANT OVER! THANK YOU FOR READING! ^-^_


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